


Ladder To The Stars

by shadowintheshade



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (it's Blaise), Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Glam Rock, M/M, Mild Transphobia, Multi, Polyfidelity, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pyrophobia, Synesthesia, Three Years Later, Trans Male Character, glam rock!Draco, quidditch player!Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:53:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 28,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23654893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowintheshade/pseuds/shadowintheshade
Summary: "He was elegance walking hand in hand with lies - a cigarette tracing a ladder to the stars"Aesthetic shamelessly pinched from "Velvet Goldmine" - Harry/ Draco Glam Rock AU!Three years after the war Harry is a semi professional Quidditch player and Draco is fronting his own Wizard-Glam-Rock band. When both are invited to Hogwarts to take part in a grand re-construction celebration they instantly clash over rehearsal space and from then on it's the usual enemies-to-lovers story :-)Meanwhile Pansy and Luna are a thing, Blaise is trans, Ginny's falling for a girl on the opposite Quidditch team and Hermione/ Ron and Krum are also a thing. Enjoy :-)
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley/OC, Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Pansy Parkinson, Marcus Flint/Oliver Wood
Comments: 51
Kudos: 107





	1. Chapter 1

**1.**

It's like he never left. But only in the way it can feel like he never left, while at the same time coming with the weight of three years gone. He remembers it all like nothing else – and really, he supposes now – like nothing it ever was.

Each footstep down the path to the pitch is like a snap shot, a memory, every breath a song of what a place used to be. These breaths offered up to the chill October air hover long after they have passed, plumes of frosty smoke left in their wake; here we go, he thinks, making ghosts of ourselves again.

When did he get so morbid? He's not even sad today, but it's a melancholy kind of happiness, being back, walking the path overlooking Hagrid's hut in the early morning light, pumpkins burgeoning bright orange against the fading green, footsteps crunchy in the frost and leaves and at the same time the sunlight, so bright it can only feel unnatural, so bright at the end of autumn it can only be Hogwarts. The gold and dazzle and broken dream of Hogwarts.

Morbid, yeah. He thinks it started with accepting his readiness to die and never really left him. So many times over the years he has wondered if he really did rejoin the living after all. He remembers Ginny in exasperation sighing this truth at him in one of their final rows. She was ready to move on, she said, why couldn't he be too? It was a gap in their connection he could never have breached, a gap which of itself had heralded a severance of that connection. He couldn't move on, he could only keep moving.

He supposes he has always known he would come back here eventually, dreading and expecting it and not ready for it, needing it and wanting it and afraid of it. But he remembers, with the shadow of the newly restored castle overhead – remembers how this and only this has ever felt like any kind of home. It does feel like coming home. He supposes he had hoped something else could feel that way, like the Burrow could, like a person could, like Ginny should have, but it didn't and she didn't and he can kind of understand why Hermione came back to finish her studies, why Neville started working here as soon as he could, so as to never have to leave. He wonders why he left himself. There is comfort in this place; in its walls and its earliest memories, comfort in gripping a broom in his hand again now and Hagrid waving at him from the hut down the slope as though he was on his way to his first try-outs on the pitch.

Ten years ago and a hundred thousand extra years, he's dawdling, he knows it, the Harpies are well up ahead of them even on their way to the Quidditch grounds and he hopes this does not portend anything for their matches to come. Gods he's ready to fly, here more than ever. _Ready,_ he thinks, gripping the wood, smelling the polish and the damp of the morning – _ready to fly –_ the words sound good in his head, like they go half way to curing something. There's a reason he thought about flying the first time he tried a Patronus; actually there are a few reasons, but he's not quite willing to think about the others just at the moment, beyond the sensation of rising into the air – no, there was more, there was definitely another factor, a late night thought that he puts away by morning and would rather not raise now with the uncomplicated pleasures the day seems to be bringing. Quidditch Practise at Hogwarts! It's like he could pretend he was a kid again before the war and death and the fallen fifty ever happened. He's ready to pretend again; he wonders if this is a good thing.

“Are you coming or what?”

Ginny's loud tones, abrasive as ever, startle him out of his reverie, as she comes running back towards him -

“Mate, I know I said we'd beat you rotten – didn't expect we'd do it before we even reached the pitch”

“Shut up, I was -”

She raises an eyebrow, but there's care in it now -

“Thinking? It's a lot isn't it? Being back?”

“It's – weird – I guess I'm glad we've got guest quarters – it would have been too strange being back in the old dorms.”

“It _is_ still a functioning school Harry – oddly enough there are _students_ in those dorms.”

“And again I say, shut up?”

She grins. He grins. He thanks all the powers that they have managed to return to this – what they should always have been really – friends. After the break the first year had been difficult, but since they started flying for rival teams it's gotten better. Since finding out Gin now flew for The Harpies in more ways than one, it's got better still. Everything's felt like it could be mending – if only a little since he started flying again himself, since quitting the Aurors and joining The Wasps – now more than ever, he nods internally at the good decision that had been.

“So when did you say Ron and Hermione were joining us?”

“End of November. Krum's not flying in until just before Celebrations start – too big a star to practise with the likes of us y'know,” but she says it with a grin, she's never had issue with Krum, even if it did take Harry a little while to get used to it – still he's just glad Ron and Hermione have come out about it finally.

“Ah so – they're not really joining _us_ at all then -”

“Just here to support the bae,” Ginny shrugs without malice - “Can you believe Bulgaria are even sending their National Team to play at a mere school festival anyway?”

“I mean – _bae?_ Gin? Really? - are we calling it that now? A festival?”

“Grand re-opening?”

“Celebration? Is there anything they _haven't_ tried out?”

“Umm – the Great Hogwarts Hootenany?”

“- I stand corrected.”

“It's a _Celebration of Light Defeating Darkness Potter -_ ” Ginny succeeds in impersonating Mcgonagall so accurately Harry finds himself turning round to check if she's not standing behind him - “ _A Pageant, a Display to show the entire wizarding world that good will always prevail.”_

“They couldn't just make an announcement to the papers that they finished rebuilding the school?”

“You're such a spoilsport.”

“I'm here, aren't I?”

“Flying for the _Wasps.”_

“As opposed to what? Being put up on a stage so I can just stand there and have people behold my glory?”

“You say that like they wouldn't, Mr Saviour.”

“Oh god this was a terrible idea, wasn't it?”

“Probably, okay shut up, stop fraternising with the enemy – that's me by the way, and get back to your team, nitwit.”

Harry sighs; even as just friends he can't _not_ do what Ginny tells him. That said, there are very few people who _can._ He rejoins his team as they cluster on the edge of the Quidditch grounds looking to where their team Captain is locked in altercation with a group of people a little too far down the pitch for Harry to make out clearly.

“What's going on?” he frowns.

“Some kind of barney with one of the bands,” Taz nods, without turning to look at him but keeping her eyes strained to try and see what's going on. Anastasia Blake, best beater he's ever met, who accidentally concussed him with a wocky Bludger the first time they ever met and only just succeeds in hiding an enormous crush on Ginny Weasley that only Harry knows about.

“Bands?”

“Yeah – you know – they invited a couple of wizard rock bands to play the same week we do our matches against the Harpies – looks like they arrived early to practice too.”

“It's a big pitch – we can't just share?”

“ 'parantly not.”

It all suddenly seems quite comically familiar, like he's twelve again and just about to hear that the Slyherins have booked the pitch in advance of them to train their new seeker. Only Flint's with them now and he _wishes_ it was second year again. He can hear raised voices from down the pitch – Flint – who's a better and fairer captain of the Wasps than Harry would have ever given him credit for when Captaining the Slytherin Quidditch team – heading back up the field towards them still rumbling his assurances that – as Taz just said there's room on this pitch for all of them – and a group of what looks like angry rainbows and sparkles trailing after him.

“It's the glam rock band then,” he murmurs.

“You _think?”_ Taz raises a heavy eyebrow - “I never seen metal sparkle like that, Harry.”

The group really _does_ sparkle and the one in the lead, striding towards Flint with more assurance and aggression than the rest – almost hurts Harry's eyes the way he catches the sun, some kind of glamour Harry reckons, lining him like silver like the edge of a cloud, a stream of silver chiffon billowing out behind him. He swaggers like the he thinks the floor owes him something for walking on it, and Harry wishes he could see better through that dazzle because he could swear to all the stars he only ever knew one person swagger like that and it sets the hairs on the back of his neck prickling – not unpleasantly, to hear that rather shrill voice insisting -

“No I _can't_ share! I _told_ the headmistress yesterday – I need to test the entire pitch for acoustics – I certainly don't want -”

He stops, almost nose to nose with Flint, who stands in front of his team as though protecting them from this onslaught of glitter, shimmer and arrogant petulance. Harry finds himself blinking rapidly, like some of that silver dust cloud got caught in his eye and he cannot help but take a step forward frowning at the same time as the silvery – gold head turns to stare at _him -_

“ _Malfoy?”_

It really _is_ exactly like that morning nine years ago. Malfoy's face swimming into view amidst the glitter eye makeup and sparkling chiffon cloud, his eyes narrowing – were they always _that_ silver? - and his lip curling in almost delighted disdain -

“ _Potter?_ Is that you?”

__x__

**My beta said "Don't worry I'm sure your intended audience _will_ get all your velvet goldmine references even if I don't"....but i swear to god idk what that audience will be since I'm not sure anyone ever asked for a wizard glam rock au? Oh well, when you see how pretty GlamDraco is you'll know what I meeaaan :-) There _maaay_ be illustrations to come :-)**


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

He hasn't heard his name said like that in years. He'd had no idea how much he'd missed it – he'd had no idea that amount of condescension, verging on disgust even, _was_ something he could have missed. But god knows, he got so sick of being _The Saviour_ all the time, the _boy who bloody lived –_ if there was one person who could always be relied on _not_ to put him on a pedestal it was Malfoy. He wonders if that was why he always enjoyed their enmity as much as he did; he suspects, now older and a little wiser, that there may have been another reason or two but he's hardly prepared to think of that right now, in light of those silver eyes practically dancing as they scan him in frankly incredulous superiority.

“Almost didn't recognise you under that bumblebee suit. Merlin, you look like a Hufflepuff on acid -” the laugh is fake and clear as a crystal bell in the morning air, but the glee that accompanies it, Harry fears, is entirely genuine. It occurs to him that he's been _here_ before too – feeling clueless and ridiculous, inappropriately dressed and incapable of impressing the boy in Madam Malkin's who had already known so much and postured so beautifully.

_(Beautifully?_ He files _that_ part of the thought process away for later.)

Once again he finds himself hating Malfoy with a fiery pleasure, hates him from the toes of those knee high silver glitterboots to the crystal jewels studded in a starburst pattern around the corner of his eye. He hates the way his nose turns up as he looks him over, like Harry was something he had stepped in, hates the knife-edge lines of him and the contrasting softness of the scarf playing around his neck as though the breeze itself was in love with him. He hates the way Malfoy towers over him, now more than ever in those six inch platforms, hates the sneering cut glass and crystal of him, silver and gold glitter in his hair and the breathtaking strength and fragility in his eyes – he _hates_ him, hates him half to death, he always has. There is _so_ much he could find to bite back in reply but instead what comes out of his mouth is a frighteningly old familiar -

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

“Oh my -” Malfoy's hanger's on – Harry assumes they must be band members, producers and assorted team but Malfoy just makes everyone around him look like hangers on – have caught up to him by now, and are watching him and this exchange as though every word he utters is just poised to go down in history. “How we _have_ improved on our repartee and cutting retorts since school. You cut me to the quick, Potter”. Somebody behind him snickers. Harry half expects to see the shadows of Crabbe and Goyle looming over.

“Shut up, Malfoy.” Harry turns and Draco arches an eyebrow as Ginny pushes her way forward, all elbows and steam - “And maybe grow up? _Nice_ dress up, really _appropriate? -_ you know for an early morning casual rehearsal.”

“Oh -” Malfoy's lip twitches, his eyebrow jerks, although not until Harry has noticed something shutting off around his eyes – disappointment? Regret? - “Should have known. Always did bring your little weasel girlfriend along to pick your fights for you, didn't you Potter?”

“I'm flying for the _Harpies,_ you moron!”

“Yeah -” he sniffs, looking between her and Harry, nostrils flaring almost angrily. “ _Right._ Three years and you two are still attached at the bloody hip. Work out he always did have an eye for an opposing team member, did you weaselette?”

“ _Look_ Malfoy -” Harry tries to sound patient, but it never was his forte, certainly not around Malfoy.

“Yeah – if I may – my client doesn't go by that name anymore -” a smooth voice cuts in and Harry's heart sinks a bit as Zabini pushes forward – though _pushes_ is perhaps the wrong word for the way he slides into view without appearing to touch anyone. Like Malfoy, Harry cannot help but think that Zabini looks like he was just _born_ to glam rock, the tailored waistcoat and gold swirl down his face looking more like a uniform on him than their school robes ever had.

“Let it go, Blaise -” Malfoy waves him away airily.

“Anyway if you lot are quite done with the school reunion -” Flint cuts on in stolidly - “There's no _acoustics_ on a Quidditch pitch, Malfoy. I'm sure you can sing while we fly – _if_ you're not too distracted by how dashing Potter looks in our colours, of course.”

Harry splutters, Draco scoffs.

“ _Distracted -”_ Draco huffs - “Like _I'd_ be watching _that_. Ugh -”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Ginny rolls her eyes, Taz high fives her over Harry's head -

“Shall we get flying, then?”

The girls turn and start getting Quidditch balls out as the rest of the team turn their back on the glaring glam rockers, getting into position.

“Harry?” Taz calls back over her shoulder - “Earth to Potter?” and he blinks, startled, not realising, until the blink makes him break eye contact with Malfoy – that he has in fact been keeping it up the whole time, Malfoy's gaze as level and challenging as it has always been, his eyes smirking at Harry while his lip remains curled.

-x-

They lose to The Harpies pitifully that morning, and it is all, undeniably Harry's fault; what's worse is that everyone absolutely knows that it's Harry's fault, and worse _yet_ a lot of them seem to have an idea as to why he played so badly that he does not even have himself, sharing knowing nods and sighs with each other rather than giving him the shit he suspects he deserves.

At first it was just a host of thoughts assaulting him that made him a bit out of it. As he started off and up he was racking his brains to remember if he had even _known_ Malfoy fronted a wizard glam rock band; he was wondering when it had started, if he could remember the band name, what name Malfoy was going by these days if it wasn't Malfoy. He remembered, if nothing else, why he would have ditched the name, at least for all public purposes. He remembers the last time he saw Malfoy, just after the trial where he had spoken up for them, saving both Draco and his mother from Azkaban. As he recalled even Lucius had been given a suspended sentence, even that which was reduced in the end to – he forgets how many years – of house arrest. He remembers the boy he had watched in the court room; he had watched him almost the whole time, the pale, pinched and frightened face he had barely dared raise, a voice he could hardly make audible, as though he did not even believe in his own defence. He had looked shocked when sentence was not pronounced, watched Harry like a frightened gazelle when he testified on their behalf. Harry had tried to go over to them the moment court was adjourned, to say something – anything – a thank you, a hand shake, a cessation of hostilities if nothing else. He had wanted to give Malfoy his wand back, to tell him what he had realised standing on the bridge outside of Hogwarts in that melancholy, hopeful moment of telling Ron and Hermione it was Draco who'd has ownership of the Elder wand all along. So many things had come together in his head, solidifying in his heart the moment he had heard the softness with which he'd said Draco's name. He had been ready, at that moment, post trial, to confess everything, to ask Draco to offer him his hand again, just so he could take it this time.

But as he had approached the stand Draco had flashed him a lock of such narrow eyed bitterness that he had stopped still – stopped for long enough for Draco and his father to take off out of the court room without another word while Narcissa alone of the family, inclined her head to him and gave a dignified, _Thank you Mr Potter._

Then they were gone.

Yes, he was thinking about that and not the game when the Snitch was released. He was wondering why music, why glam rock – _Dragon's bane? Serpent's tongue? -_ something like that, surely. He had half a memory of seeing something about them in _The Quibbler_ a year or so ago. It had been a rather glowing review. Draco's stage name was still eluding him when he had heard the crackle and tap of a microphone being switched on, and a shockingly loud, mocking drawl startling him so he almost came off his broom -

“- _Sectumsempra –_ alright, fellas?”

_That_ word from _those_ lips, so tightly enunciated; Harry nearly freezes into position on his broom, like it was a jibe thrown specifically his way not, as he realises a moment late – a song title. But then again he could swear Malfoy turns his head slyly in his direction as he says it and gives the _song title_ an air of spite it might not quite need. He cannot hear what the others are saying to Malfoy, only his replies, still into the microphone -

“I don't give a _fuck_ about the lighting Blaise, we're out here to test my voice not the fucking light show.”

Again he doesn't hear what Blaise says next, but he sees Malfoy spin him the finger like he was born to the gesture. He is so busy staring that the Snitch almost hits him right in the face as it zooms past. As he tries to make up for his lack of concentration and heads after it, he hears the choke and scratch of the guitars tuning and the lazy, slightly discordant wail of a cello sliding in alongside it, a rather sickening heart stopping sound which sounds – well – it sounds to Harry rather like the musical rendition of a murder in a bathroom. He is torn as he flies – between the guilt he has never quite got over, and with vowing to murder Malfoy for real as soon as he is back on the ground. As if this wasn't enough, Malfoy's voice chases him through the air next, a knife cutting through the breeze with a clear bright glittering edge and a hot melting hiss in its wake.

He finds himself having to grip onto his broom as though for dear life, swearing internally because dear gods he never expected Malfoy to sound like _that._ He had had not had time really to come to any conclusions about what he _did_ suspect, but it was never something as gorgeously lacerating as the voice which taunts him now, like a higher hand dangling the Snitch forever out of his reach until the Harpies Seeker swoops in front and plucks it right out from under his nose, shaking her head like the victory was too easy to even enjoy.

-x-

“It was the music,” Harry grumbles when they're back on the ground and he is assailed by a chorus of grumbling, _what the fuck Harry?_ from just about all sides - “It was distracting, alright.”

“Oh yeah, yeah the _music,_ that was it,” Flint rolls his eyes as though he knows something Harry doesn't and he catches Ginny's eye for a quick second before she sighs and shakes her head, looking away again quickly to hide an expression just as knowing. He really doesn't know what they're all on about, and it does not make him feel any less irritated.

“Look, we'll go again after lunch,” Flint sighs - “Take the rest of the morning to get a grip Potter, work it out and come back ready to play this time, not – look never mind, just sort it out okay?”

He nods glumly and stares heavily at the turf as they all trail off ahead of him, wondering what the hell they all think he needs to get a grip about and _work out,_ wondering to be honest what the problem was anyway; he's played with distractions before, Dementors and rogue Bludgers and a bloody great dragon. Their implications are right – it _ought_ to take more than a bit of weird, off kilter music and a voice like molten stardust to throw him off like this. He kicks the ground in annoyance. Flying has always been such a release, a time when he can let go of the responsibility of being anything else other than bloody good at what he's doing. The very sensation of it – sliding into the air like diving into a river – has always refreshed him, calmed him and felt as though it was cleaning out his head. Now his brain feels clogged up and swirling with thoughts like a rainbow in a penseive. The last thing in the world he needs right now is to hear a mocking voice calling -

“Need new glasses, Potter? Looks like you're losing your team as well as your grip!”

But it _is_ what he has to hear right now, and he knows without having to turn that it's accompanied by Draco Malfoy swaggering up the pitch towards him, smirking at his dullness and stupidity. He turns to face him stoically, because – well because he always _has._ He's always been as ready (eager?) to rise to the bait as Malfoy has been to hurl it.

“You _really_ haven't changed your act since first year have you, Malfoy? Cutting as ever. I swear. Almost as good as _training for the ballet.”_

“Oh -” Malfoy smirks, Harry realises with horror that he's been staring at his lips, shining with clear gloss and glittering with tiny silver stars, even when after he pokes the tip of his stupid bastard tongue out to lick them a little, like a cat enjoying its prey. Harry's never been easy prey and if he's a mouse at all it's the mouse who picked the fight with this pampered, spoilt cat.

“My heart -” he places his hand on it dramatically - “You _remembered –_ I'm so touched.”

“You're bloody touched all right – what are you, like twelve still?”

“What are you still playing about with games of Quidditch?”

“Better than playing dress up.”

“Oh but I dress up so _nice.”_

He's _still_ staring at Draco's lips, isn't he? He wrenches his eyes up, but those coolly mocking grey eyes are no better; they seem to be laughing at him, at the same time challenging him to yes, absolutely believe they have neither of them changed since they were young Seekers battling across this Quidditch pitch. He wonders if it's a game, an image Malfoy is projecting entirely for fun or if it's harder than he makes it look, and he gulps because yeah, he looks bloody amazing, like every second of work his make up department have taken on him has been designed to draw the eye back to him wherever he goes and frankly, he always had that effect on Harry anyway. He's torn – he's been torn in various directions all morning – between wishing he could talk to Malfoy seriously about everything he's needed to talk to him about for far too long, and frankly enjoying the verbal sparring with a surge of nostalgic joy.

“Why are you here, Malfoy?”

“Obviously for the run up to and for headlining the as yet un-named celebratory week Potter, same as you.”

“No I mean _here_ why are you _here?_ Bothering me. Right now. Don't you have _rehearsal_ or whatever you call it?”

“We call it rehearsal Potter, yeah. Twat.”

“Well suppose you hurry back to it? _Sectumsempra_ won't sing itself, you know”. It comes out nastier than he quite meant it to but Draco just laughs, a pretty painted laugh -

“Heard that did you?”

“You only shouted it into the microphone.”

“Did I?” Draco raises a shoulder, faux idly, like he's too good even to shrug properly. Harry rolls his eyes.

“You know what? I've had a crap morning. I don't have time for this. I _really_ need to shower right now and – ugh what are you doing? Can you _not?”_

“Yeah you do, don't you?” Draco stops sniffing him and screws his nose up - “You go straight to that Potter, don't let me keep you. Now if you'll excuse me I have a sensation to create.”

He tosses his scarf with unnecessary flair and stalks off back to the band. Harry doesn't care. He doesn't want to talk to him anyway and he _certainly_ doesn't watch him go in his cloud of glitter and silvery shimmer, trailing starlight and sandalwood behind him. He doesn't stare after Malfoy until he's a dazzling pinprick at the far end of the field and the distant crackle of electric guitar joins the crackle of autumn leaves under Harry's feet. He doesn't do that at all.

__x__

**It starts :-)**


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

He turns the water on far too hot, and it feels so fucking good as he gets under the shower. Hot enough to clear his head a little, make him feel better – if _better_ is the right word, because he sort of lied to Malfoy, didn't he? It wasn't that the morning had been _crap_ per se – just confusing, as though being back here wasn't complicated enough for him.

He scrubs his hands through his hair, wondering if he really _did_ smell _that_ bad, but mostly trying to compartmentalise his feelings. He's never been good at it; he feels like he's maybe always felt too many simultaneous enormous things to deal with, and in he end he always just explodes or fights with brief and sudden surrenders before settling back down into his churning scylla of whirling thought.

So, he thinks – firstly – and putting aside everything he had been thinking pre- Malfoy for a moment, because it all no longer seems quite as relevant as it did first thing this morning. Firstly: it's been three years. Had he imagined seeing Malfoy again? Fuck yes, so often, too often. Had he wanted to see him? Yes, if he has to be honest, only – yes and yes and yes. What was Malfoy to him? This one was bigger, not a friend, he was never that but – after he threw Harry the wand that had defeated Voldemort, after he had failed to identify him to Bellatrix, after rescuing Malfoy from Fiendfyre- not really an enemy, ever. When he looks back upon their time as enemies, it feels – and has felt for years – like they belonged to memories of a happier time, the good part of his time at Hogwarts. It feels like their enmity had been nothing more than that of silly kids playing at rivalry and frankly, again, being brutally honest here – he had always rather enjoyed it – and yes, alright then, he glares down at his cock which perks up to give him this reminder- he had got off on it as well.

(“And you can shut up as well,” he mutters out loud to his dick, which does not take a blind bit of notice, apparently still thinking about Malfoy's lips.)

Which brings him to the final, and most nerve wracking question – how does he _feel?_ And about Malfoy, that has never been a question he really wanted to answer seriously. Yes _alright –_ sparring with Malfoy, be it duelling, fisticuffs or verbal always got him hard; he'll never forget how viciously and furiously he whacked off the night after getting thrown off the Quidditch team. He hadn't wanted to ever stop punching the git, and he hadn't wanted to stop at punching him. He's fancied the bastard since he first saw him get on a broom, the sheer exquisite elegance of him tracing a ladder to the stars. But then – then that same perfect poise made him _hate_ Malfoy, because he always made Harry feel like a stupid great oaf in comparison. Wanting Malfoy had always made him hate him all the more, just imagining all the ways in which it was never going to happen. And god had he imagined them. Also personality was a thing, and from the very first moment of their acquaintance he had been disgusted with Malfoy's arrogance, pomposity and his selfish disdain for the feelings of others. It was utterly unfair that those supercilious, drawling tones should so simultaneously have enraged and aroused him almost every day they had been at school together.

But then – then towards the end, there had been something else, hadn't there? Something way beyond schoolboy sparring and adolescent lust? He had come to worry about Malfoy, to care what happened to him and pity him for the things he had seen through Voldemort's eyes. He had come to see in Draco somebody who could have been him in different circumstances, somebody braver than he would ever know and better than he had ever expected, incapable of violence or real cruelty even when forced. When he had realised, finally, that Draco had never even known he owned the Elder wand and would not – he was certain of this – have known what to do with it if he had – his heart had softened inside him like a frozen thing unfurling. He had felt as though he had known Draco, from the inside out, along every stage of his struggles those past two years, that he had passed across the stage of his life, seeing just how full of subtlety and shade what he had taken for badness could be. He had felt almost as though Draco's life had been his own, that there was nothing to distinguish them beyond external circumstance. He had wanted to help but beyond the trial he had been barred from it.

And so, taken altogether, in the end the feeling that prevails the most when he thinks of Draco is one of frustration.

_Yeah -_ his cock nudges at him – _I know, right?_

“Oh shut up,” he sighs, and, closing his eyes, takes his cock in his hand, grunting softly to himself at the relief of the sensation.

He tries not to think about Malfoy, of course; he has spent about ten years trying not to think about Malfoy at these moments, but true to form he's there, in his head, eyes glittering with that silver which _had_ to be some kind of glamour, right? Malfoy – exactly as he had been today, all pale perfection and elegance and poise, even the way he looked at Harry like he wasn't good enough to kiss his ridiculous glitter boots, makes Harry whimper in needy lust, thrusting into his palm and trying not to think about those eyes, what that skin would feel like to touch, how delicate and strong he seems all at once, how the sharp angles and soft skin of him would feel beneath his hands. He can see that tongue coming out again to lick his lips with foul intent – _had_ to be – the plump soft gleam and hard curl of those lips – how they would taste, if Malfoy would still sneer beneath his mouth. If those eyes would darken or glitter with scorn even as he got down elegantly to his knees – oh _fuck –_ Harry comes swearing, thankful it's only the shower he's making a mess of. It's never taken much, not with Malfoy.

He's still feeling pleasantly wrung out a minute later, stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel round himself, feeling the warm wash of vague – if nowhere near quite enough – relief. All the same he lets out an actual shriek as the changing room door flies open and an unwelcomed pointy face peeks in, nose held even higher than usual.

“Manly,” Draco announces, dripping sarcasm. “Really. So. You're here, are you? Merlin's ballsack, it stinks in here.”

“Get out!”

“Why? Up to something we shouldn't have been, were we?”

Harry hopes to heck he doesn't go red, this being far too close to the truth; _god,_ he thinks – what if he'd come in a moment earlier?

“Shut up, Malfoy!”

“ _That's_ a yes. Tell me whatever does the saviour think about when it's alone o'clock in the changing rooms?”

“That's none of your – shut up, and I wasn't -”

He could punch Malfoy for that raised eyebrow, for how red he _knows_ he's going this time, for the way he gives Harry the filthiest once-over he might ever have been subjected to, a full head to toe raking that makes him feel like he needn't even have bothered with the towel.

“Can you stop that?”

“Oh what, like I've never been in here with half naked Quidditch players before? Don't flatter yourself.”

“Why are you here?”

“Nostalgia,” Draco answers, far too promptly - “Wanted to see if anything had changed. What, you _haven't_ gone snooping round the castle yet?”

“Do you want to fuck off?”

“Not especially. My presence seems to be bothering you, and honestly that's too good to miss.”

“I need to change!”

“Please don't let me stop you.”

“Are you _stalking_ me?”

“Oh please. Judge everyone by your own standards, Potter?”

“I've never -” but he trails off; he's always been a bit hit and miss at lying and he remembers far too suddenly that he _did_ spend most of a year stalking Malfoy once, and it only counted as _once_ if you ignored all the other years when he _hadn't_ had an excuse - “Oh piss off,” he finishes lamely instead.

“Testy, aren't we? Actually I _will_ piss off, all this warm air is doing nothing for my chiffon and glitter. I can feel this scarf going positively _limp_.”

He spits out the word _limp_ in what Harry swears has to be the worst possible way.

“ _Goodbye_ Malfoy,” he sighs firmly.

“Later Potter.” Malfoy gives him a cheery little finger wave and he could swear the way he says _later_ sounds like a promise, possibly a threat. He sighs as the door slams closed again and sinks down heavily on the bench against the wall.

Why? he groans to himself, head in hands. Why is Malfoy _like_ this? Why does he _do_ this to him? He's always seemed to have the natural ability to make Harry look like an utter idiot, always. He has rarely felt himself anything beyond an utter unworthy imbecile in his presence even while he despised him for his snooty, mean spirited pureblood self. He supposes he should be grateful; time was he would have given rather a lot to see him returned to the irritating little shit of the first few years at school and maybe – yes in all seriousness, perhaps he _is_ glad of it, though he cannot help but wonder where the frightened boy he caught glimpses of at Malfoy Manor and later in the battle – where that boy has got to. If he knows Malfoy – and somehow he's always rather felt as though he does- more completely than perhaps he should – then that's boy's still in there, hiding under the lip gloss and glitter. Why does he have to think about this _so_ much? Why care? He starts to dress, positively angrily, turning his thoughts back to Quidditch, to being back here, to seeing the others when they come to join him, anything, anything other than Malfoy.

_Dragontongue,_ he remembers, as he heads out a few minutes later – that was the band name, last he heard of it.

__x__


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

The truth is – and Draco has never been a huge fan of honesty, so any train of thought that starts this way is absolutely doubtless to end in grief – still, the truth is – he hadn't been expecting Potter. He cannot help but feel a little bit foolish – spending the last four years visualising what has always felt like an inevitable reunion, he never once imagiend that it would come _now,_ at school with all the other memories and ghosts that dredged up. Thank god for the image he was creating, the sensation, the character and the mask; he isn't sure – in his room that night – if he could have got through the day without it. As it is he thinks he played it pretty well; he looks at himself in the mirror and cannot see beyond the curl of his own lip, the glitter in the corner of his own eye – he cannot see _himself_ in there – not beyond the self he has chosen for just now – and that's good. He takes a deep breath and nods at the mirror in approval.

There have been a lot of mirrors over the years. He remembers them becoming the enemy when he was sixteen; of course he became drawn to them, not sure what it is that has always made his enemies somehow enticing. There was a fine line between vanity and self loathing and for a while there it was a tightrope act. He remembers – remembers seeing someone in the glass he was shocked to find out he didn't like; someone who was chosen only for failure, chosen for a victim – chosen – really, for nothing at all. After the war, he decided he never wanted to see his face red-eyed and tear streaked again, so he started with eyeliner. You can't cry, he reasoned, through intricate eye make up; it would be too much of a waste to see it go into streaks. It was the same with music; couldn't hear your own nervous heart beat, your internal neurosis over the sound of a good beat. His father had said it was vulgar – _still_ objected in fact, even in the face of the band's – albeit recent- success. Frankly, parental disaproval has long since felt like a form of encouragement rather than anything else.

The funny thing was, that if the music and the make up had started out as a mask, they seemed to have rather become a part of Draco that felt more himself than he was, and if there was still a part of him hiding behind them in fear of the people he used to be, well then – who wasn't hiding behind something, and what made a lie deplorable when it created a beautiful new whole? He wonders, turning away from the mirror, what Potter hides behind. He has always had the rather uncomfortable feeling that in a world full of fakers, Potter might be the only person just trying to be himself without external artifice. He sighs. Speaking of fakers he thinks he can hear Pansy's voice in their shared lounge area ouside the bedroom. He smiles at the sound, finishes the last touches of arsenic green and old gold in the corners of his lips, turns back his collar, fixes the green pin to it and goes out to meet her.

Pansy's hugging Blaise when he _wanders_ idly in, so he ignores her and takes the sofa. It's a good lounge, this, reminiscent of the Slytherin common room in many ways, and the black leather sofa's fit for three people at least. Or Draco.

“- amazing darling, just amazing -” Pansy's gushing. To be honest, Draco's not even sure he's _heard_ her this ebulliant before even when she means it – but maybe that's why she's being so extra now – he can see in the first seconds how nervously her eyes dart about the room, clocking everything, making sure to get it all down, not even looking at Blaise when she hugs him but everywhere else at once. She's nervous to be back, of course she is, possibly even more than he is; and god forbid a Slytherin ever display anxiety as what it is. He's more transparent than most.

“So -” she looks at Blaise challengingly, tosses her head like she's forgotten how short her hair is and puts her hands on her hips - “What did I miss?”

“Not much,” Blaise shrugs, laconic as ever. “Potter's here, Draco's completely -”

“ _Potter?”_ Pansy's lip curls almost ferally back from her teeth - “Fuck's sake – Draco's completely -” she pantomimes a melodramatic swooning gesture, “-then?”

“Completely,” Blaise nods, catching her.

“I _can_ hear you both, you couple of absloute cunts,” Draco sighs, wondering how they ever came to this conclusion about his feelings for Potter – groaning internally because the very fact that he'd just worded it _feelings for Potter_ proves that there was something to come to a conclusion about.

“Come here and hug me then, you ridiculous cow,” he rolls his eyes, holding out his arms to Pansy without otherwise budging from the sofa. Pansy hugs him with every outer appearance of all the superficiality she offered Blaise, but she sneakily puts her head on his shoulder in a gesture of tender support that would have surprised anyone who wasn't Draco.

“You're alright though sweetheart, yeah?” She whispers, adding louder - “You gonna even budge up so I can sit down?”

“Yeah,” he nods - “And no, obviously not Pans, have we met?”

“Yeah, like Draco's ever shared a sofa in his life -” Blaise takes the only good armchair, legs crossed like a lotus flower - “Likes his minions sat at his feet, don't you Milord?”

“Shut up Blaise. Pans, you clash with me, it just won't do.”

“Have you _seen_ your lipstick? That clashes with _everything.”_

“Which is why I am reclining in black today; you _can_ kiss me you know, I don't smudge.”

“You _look_ like you'd smudge, and unlike you I don't kiss boys.”

“I have _never_ kissed a boy in my life.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“Pans, get on the floor. Why are you even here?”

“I'm back up,” Pansy bounces into a cross legged position in front of the sofa.

“You _know_ I'm not letting you sing back -”

“The emotional support kind, _durr!”_

“Yes. I will fall apart without you. Blaise, why's Pansy here again?”

“Groupie?”

“Ugh I am _not –_ can you even be a groupie singular?”

“You're not singular though, are you darling? Where _is_ your lovely lady?”

“She is _not_ your groupie either – and she's coming tomorrow with the Granger-Weasleys and Krum.”

“Oh _nooo -”_

“ _Yes._ Enforced interhouse bonding. You _know_ you love it.”

“Can't picture it, Pans – you and Luna at couples night with – wait is it still a couples night when they're a three-way?”

“Fuck knows, and we don't _hang out –_ not yet. Though I'd hang out with Krum any day.”

“Same,” Blaise nods.

“Blaise you slut, you'd _hang out_ with anyone.”

“That's a subversive lie. Neither of you two stand a chance.”

“I shall cry into my pillow every night.” Draco mimics a yawn, and he and Pansy continue by holding onto each other and fake crying at volume.

“You both are wankers,” Blaise sighs genially.

“ _Speaking_ of wankers -” Draco's eyes gleam. “You'll never guess what I nearly walked in on in the Quidditch changing rooms today -”

The way he tells it has Pansy laughing her arse off – always a jarring unpleasant sound, even to those who know and love her, and yet it can be oddly infectious at the same time; even Blaise is smirking which for Blaise is a bloody belly laugh. The way he tells it lets him almost ignore some of the more awkward aspects of what he was feeling at the time – because there's no getting away now from the sight of a damn half naked Potter, with a flushed, slightly glowing post orgasm face – or the reaction in Draco that he thinks he may have stifled quite manfully. He suspects it's a sight he'll be thinking about later, without the hiliarity with which this retelling has been imbued.

“Amazing,” Pansy wheezes when Draco winds down and she has room and ability to breathe for laughing - “What _does_ The Saviour wank over, do we think?”

“Obviously _me.”_ Draco raises a shoulder in the gesture of one who's too cool to shrug.

“You wish,” Blaise rolls his eyes. Pansy doesn't say anything, but she catches Draco's eye with sympathy because she suspect he probably _does_ wish, but Blaise is standing, strecthing, yawning before she can speak - “Right. Bed. You especially, Mr Black, I am _not_ having to explain to make – up why you need extra concealer again. Get some sleep this time.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Draco salutes him.

“Is he always like this?” Pansy raises an eyebrow as Blaise heads out, eyeing them both suspiciously like a parent who does not believe the child's promise to sleep for one moment.

“Worse,” Draco rolls his eyes - “That's what I pay him for after all, and to be fair why he's a better band manager than you ever were, my dear.”

“I'd argue if it wasn't true,” Pansy stands up, also yawning - “Merlin's tits I don't know if I can sleep here – you know what I mean?”

Draco extends a limp wrist for Pansy to help haul him to his feet.

“Completely,” he says, then he meets her eye and his lip quivers at the concern he finds there and they're suddenly hugging fiercely.

“You're not going to tell me if you're not okay, are you?” she sighs.

“Nope.”

“And I'm not going to tell you to take care, am I?”

“Doesn't sound like you, no.”

“Draco -”

“How's my make up?”

“Cracking round the edges. Go to bed.”

“Yes mum.”

“Don't let them see the cracks, okay?”

“Never. Don't you let them see you care.”

“As if! Don't lie up all night thinking about half naked Seekers right?”

“ _Would_ I?”

Pansy just snorts and shakes her head.

“Good night Draco.”

Draco smiles; it comes out more tired than usual because it's a true one and he waves her away as he goes to his room. It's funny, he thinks, they weren't really like this in school – there for each other like they are now, too busy with their own failings and crushes – Pansy's was on _him_ back then and Merlin knew how awkward _that_ had been, and Blaise – well, Draco sometimes suspects that Blaise mainly welcomed his new position as Draco's band manager for the opportunity it gave him to make sure he was eating and sleeping. Idiot Slytherins the lot of them. Draco gets them, finds them easy to love these days.

If only love was always so easy.

__x__


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

“- yes Blaise, because obviously we will be setting fire to the entire Quidditch stadium to celebrate the school's completion, bloody brilliant!”

“It was _you_ who said - and I quote, Draco – _enormous fiendfyre snake running round the whole stadium -”_

“Yeah an illusion, you wanker! A glamour! A trick of the light, not an actual bloody incantation! I can't believe you even -”

“Okay Draco calm down – take ten -”

“Oh shut up Blaise, you incredible, bitch faced twat.”

“All I said was calm -”

“ _I AM BLOODY CALM!”_ Draco shrieks in a voice that goes right up to the stands, and storms off across the pitch to prove the point, sitting down on one of the lower benches and glaring across at where Pansy is now talking to Blaise with a hand on his arm. Blaise looks pissed and part of Draco's glad about this but he's also feeling instantly guilty because he knows he's been unnecessarily mean _and_ he's shaken, because staging _Fiendfyre_ has always been a bit of a touchy subject; a walk down amnesia lane he suspects he only ever wrote into his repertoire to hurt himself.

“Rehearsal not going well?”

Oh great. Fan – fucking-tastic. Potter slides onto the bench beside him and holds out a flask. He ignores it. So, strop witnessed by all then, inclusing the waiting Quidditch teams, and frankly fuck them – including _Potter._

“Piss off, Potter.”

“Just trying to be friendly, Malfoy.”

“Why? Since when?”

“Since – we were adults and should probably stop with the adolescent rivalry?”

“Maybe I _like_ the rivalry,” he mutters and takes the flask gracelessly, sniffing it - “What _is_ this?”

“Elderflower cordial?”

“You don't _like_ elderflower cordial,” he sulks, sipping it, actually gulping it. It's good and he was thirsty. It's too hot for late October and the flames Blaise is now having put out across the pitch haven't helped.

“No, but _you_ do.”

Draco raises an eyebrow but decides to be gracious for once this morning and not comment on Potter's knowing this, just like Potter – if he did pick up on it – doesn't comment upon Draco knowing what he drinks either.

“So -” Potter stretches his arms across the back of the bench, manspreading, _of course,_ Draco thinks – he _would_ sit like that - “Why the fire?”

“Because Blaise is a useless bloody arse and forgot that our stage effects could be done with smoke and glamour?”

“Okay but – what's the story? Or – I dunno – the song?”

“ _Fiendfyre -”_ Draco says with a heavy sigh - “It's about being stuck in a burning building and getting rescued by -” he stops and looks away cagily, picking at a non existent thread on the oilslick black of his sleeve. It's quite specific, now he thinks about it – it's about being rescued from the fire that was a bit your fault to begin with by someone you loved who you'd kind of assumed would just leave you to die – as soon as he words it in his head he realises he can't say that. Not to Potter.

“It's a metaphor,” he finishes lamely, because it's actually not.

“Well that's – intense.”

“You should hear the vocal range on it.” He raises an eyebrow - “You've really _never_ heard our sound before, have you? Do you _know_ music?”

“Oh, because obviously to know music is to know yours. I didn't even know you'd changed your name.”

“I _didn't,”_ Draco nods, he'd wondered when this was going to come up. “I just use my mother's as a stage name, the name _Malfoy's_ really not popular these days – Black, though – that I can still get away with, also it sounds good. I should go apologise to Blaise.”

“I didn't know you did that.”

“What – apologise?” Draco raises an eyebrow, the flame pattern aorund his eyes makes them look angrier than he is now that he has – at least a little – _calmed down –_ which – ugh sounds like an awful pedestrian thing to do, but he's not as angry as he used to be, albeit the bar was high – and he deflates quicker these days.

“Yeah. Yeah Potter. I can apologise. Bit of a pre-requisite for fucking up a _lot. Fuck -”_ he adds thinking about it.

“What?”

“I get wound up over _Fiendfyre –_ every bloody time, then I find something to take it out on Blaise over and _he_ gets wound up faster than usual and every time, I remember – like I manage to forget in between – that -” he's saying too much, he knows, but this time he can't stop himself - “- well that – he was there too.”

He darts a quick glance at Potter to check if he's going to say something stupid. He doesn't, just nods. Thank the fucking stars.

“So why do it?” Potter asks, his voice gentler than Draco has maybe ever heard it – especially talking to _him._

“Why do what?”

“Sing about it – you know, the stuff that's going to hurt?”

“Because -” he works it out as he says it and perhaps it is only for the opportunity to work it out that he actually says it at all - “Because the person singing that song, the character and the point of view – they're someone who hates the person who rescued them, someone who's over it, someone who gets to just _hate_ and _recover_ without any messy contrary feelings at the same time. If I can be _that_ person on stage -” he shrugs, the feathers shiver around his shoulders - “I can maybe _be_ that person. Get it?”

He gets up and stalks away almost immediately rather than wait for an answer, not sure what scares him more – being understood or _not_ being understood. Luckily Pansy intercepts him before he can thik about it too much, stalking down the pitch towards him, hands on hips. Draco puts his hands up before she can even start.

“I know Pans, alright, I _know?_ What do you want, a public apology?”

“It's not me you need to apologise to Draco, it's Blaise, you know how he feels about -”

“I already said _I know_ you daft tart. I'm coming, alright?”

“Nice drink with Potter?”

“Shut the fuck up Pansy, what's -” a first year Slytherin student comes scurrying up to them and stop, staring at Draco for a moment with round, starstruck eyes.

“You're – you're -” he squeaks.

“I am aren't I? What do you want, an autograph?”

The kid makes a squeaking sound, blushes and nods furiously. Draco smiles and snorts a little before signing the text book the kid thrusts at him before standing for a moment longer.

“Something else?”

“The headmistress sent me -” he remembers - “- with a message for Miss Parkinson – she'd like to see you in her office as soon as possible.” The kid nods, pleased with himself for remembering this in the face, Draco supposes, of his own brilliance and vague fame. He glances at Pansy who seems to have gone a litle green.

“Thanks kid,” Draco jerks his chin. “She'll be right along.”

The boy dithers for a moment before running off. Draco looks at Pansy with a raised eyebrow - “What?”

Pansy blinks rapidly, scrunching her face up; Draco knows this means she's contemplating crying or running and he puts out an arm to steady her.

“That's it - “Pansy mutters - “I'm getting out of here. See you on the flipside. Gosh, it's been fun – bye now -”

“Hey! Hey hey hey _no,_ Pans – what's the problem? It's only McGonagall -”

“Yeah -” Pansy nods, screwing up her lips in an ugly sneer. “Yeah McGonagall right, cool, only do you know when the last time she ever spoke to me was?”

“I suppose at least three years ago?”

“Yeah. Course. I forgot, you weren't there. Last I ever saw of our brave new head, she was sending me to the dungeons for not wanting us all to die. Like she's going to just _forget_ that now. I may as well get lost before she kicks me out anyway. That or the dungeons again, no thank you very much, uh – uh no way, like I say -”

“ _Pansy -_ ” Draco has to grab her by both arms as she tries to stalk off - “What did you say to me just last night? No cracks remember? You're not a coward are you?”

“Yeah -” Pansy nods, panicky - “Damn right I am this time. You know what I am Draco, everyone knows what I am – I'm the coward who offered to just give Potter to Voldemort, I'm the coward who got our whole house stuck in the dungeons and everyone else bloody _cheered._ I'm the one who allowed every fucker else to show what they really thought of us, and I'm the fucking coward who's not facing _that_ again, nope thank you very -”

“Pansy shut up, come _on -”_ he grips her by the shoulders - “You're more than that aren't you? What else are you?”

“A total bitch and a bully?”

“That's right. You're a mega bitch, the biggest bitchiest cow I've ever met, and no girl tough enough to earn the moniker of mega bitch is weak enough to ignore a summons from someone who spends half their life as a kitty cat, am I right?”

Pansy deflates a little, but there's a gathering of courage in this surrender.

“Oh, when you put it like that -”

“Good girl. You go see Miaowgonagall – I'll go apologise to Blaise, okay? We got this.”

“Got this,” Pansy nods, nostrils still flaring a little, but she fist bumps him with a twitch of the lips and nods to herself as she heads away.

Draco watches her for half a moment before nodding to himself as well, and striding straight over to Blaise who turns round from the sound system before he can speak -

“I think I've got this,” he says - “One flame serpent, absolutely zero actual fire coming up -”

“Blaise -”

“I think I've also found a really neat way of making the fire sound effect a part of the music, we're just going to need to find a way to magnify your voice even further, I was thinking the section when you make that weird wailing noise -”

“Blaise, I'm sorry!”

“Oh wow, you just said that.”

“I'm growing as a person. Look, if it helps I call _everyone_ bitches and cunts?”

“I mean cool motive mate, but you know I don't like it.”

“I know. I knew it when I said it, I wasn't trying to – look that's why – with the apology, okay?”

“I suppose a gendered insult is a small price to pay for a genuine apology from an unapologetic toss bag,” Blaise shrugs, slapping Draco on the arm.

“We're good then?”

“We're good. Shut up you got an arm slap, you want a hug now?”

“Fuck off, you dick.”

“See this is good, _dick_ is good.”

“I always thought so.”

“Shut up. Do you ever wonder why we do this?”

“Fight or – this song?”

“The song you wanker, fighting comes real natural, right?”

“I think it has something to do with hating ourselves?”

“Speak for yourself.” Blaise shrugs - “I'm a fucking delight. But yeah, I'm a fucking delight with pyrophobia. I can't lie. How are you doing?”

“Smashing. Absolutely fucking lovely -”

“Are we talking daily, weekly or monthly?”

“The nightmares? Maybe let's say weekly.”

“Same. Come on, get up there and get singing – Pansy okay?”

“She will be.”

“Yeah. Hoping for a lot of that going around. Come on Black, get swaggering.”

__x__

**If Ive left any random numbers followed by "NANOPOINT" in any of these chapters let me know? I keep marking my word count for camp nano and in theory i've taken all the markers out before posting but I may have left some so please don't be afraid to let me know :-) Also I've updated tags :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

He's never seen this before – not really – not like this; these Slytherins, the way they watch each other's backs – literally a lot of the time, the way they care for each other. He is surprised by how unsurprised he is. It makes him look forward to the others arriving later today; it also makes him oddly curious – mostly about this side of Draco he hasn't seen before; he wonders if it was always there, he just didn't notice, or if he's changed in the last three years, become softer perhaps – or just nicer. He wonders what the thing that looks like an altercation with Pansy really is, and he doesn't mean to still be staring as she stalks past him on her way up to the castle.

“Staring at something, Potter?” she snarls and he looks down quickly. Maybe _she_ hasn't changed after all. On the other hand, he bites his lip thoughtfully – she _is_ Draco's best friend, _and_ she's going out with Luna – there maybe _is_ something he isn't seeing, not to mention – he jumps up before he can think himself out of it. She doesn't stop for him, so he has to sort of trot to catch up to her. That's alright, he's used to that from Hermione.

“What are you doing?” she snaps. He catches his breath.

“Did you want something.”

“Yeah -”

“ _What?”_ she spins round angrily to face him - “I'm busy. In case you hadn't noticed. And obviously you did because – oh anyway fuck off and go back to staring at Draco, why don't you?”

“I don't -”

“Oh shut up. I'm not in the mood.”

“What's up?”

“Is this because of Luna? You know _I_ don't feel under any obligation to get friendly with my girlfriend's friends and you shouldn't bother either. Rumours are true: I _am_ a cow. End of story. Thank you, goodbye.”

“Look, I just wanted to say -” honestly he hadn't been sure what he wanted to say, just that she was Draco's friend and he found himself caring – to be fair he had not thought about it from the Luna perspective at all - “I agreed with you.”

“Fine I'll bite. _When?”_

“When you said I should be given to Voldemort. I'm sorry about how everyone else reacted. I wouldn't have – I mean – well shit – I gave myself to him half an hour later anyway, didn't I?”

“Did you? I don't know Potter, I was in the bloody dungeon, and sure alright just go there why don't you?”

“What -” he frowns, clueless - “The dungeon?”

“I was thinking childhood trauma-ville, you slow dumb fuck, but you do you. Look, making friends with me is a) impossible, b) you won't like me and c) probably your main concern – won't get you into Draco's pants any quicker, and I swear to shit you _ever_ hurt him again I will eviscerate you and replace your skin with billywigs. Lovely talking to you.”

She turns from him and runs up the hill.

“That's my girl,” says a dreamy voice behind him, and he yells and turns round.

“Luna! When did you -?”

“She's so funny, don't you think?”

“Umm – she just threatened to _eviscerate me and replace my skin with billywigs?”_

“That's imaginitive. Don't worry, I'm sure she wouldn't.”

“I wouldn't be so sure.”

“Oh Harry, don't be silly. You can't replace skin with billywigs, that's just silly. Come on, let's sit down, the others will be here soon.”

“How come you're early?”

“I'm not – they're up at the castle, sorting luggage; Viktor has about fourteen trunks of clothes, you know- it's fascinating. I heard Pansy was here so I thought I'd – but then I saw you two talking and thought that was nice, so I left it. So I'll see her when she gets back from McGonagall's office.”

“Umm.”

“Umm is not a word Harry.”

“I don't think your girlfriend likes me.”

“That's alright, she doesn't like anyone – except those two. Sometimes me, and she's just protective that's all.”

“Protective?”

“Of Draco, of course. He's baby.”

“He's – Luna, are you talking about the same Draco?”

“Mmm hmm – that one. The one you're always staring at.”

“Okay – why does everyone keep saying that?”

Across the field, the guitars swing into volume, and it feels to Harry a little like being electrocuted – but in the most beautifully colourful way. The chords are gold; he can almost see it on the air and when the cello sparks to life the undercurrent of sound is amber amongst the gold, so bright at first he almost doesn't notice it's Draco playing.

“What the -” he murmurs, getting up and moving towards the sound, the vision, in something like awe, the music pulling him as though on strings.

“It's the seven minute musical introduction to _Fiendfyre,”_ Luna says, nodding as she follows him - “It's quite special, isn't it?”

“I had – Draco plays?”

“That's how he started -” Luna tells him in a whisper he's incredibly grateful for, respecting the awe the music has him under. He's never heard colours like this before, never seen music glow so brightly, it makes him want to cry. It occurs to him for the first time that this is why he has never let himself listen to too much music; the colour has always been too much for him, the input too vivid but this – he could swim in this.

“Two years ago -” Luna is saying and he's trying to listen, he really is - “Back when we were all working out what we wanted to do with our lives, because – they have to go on don't they, after everything – Draco started playing violin – piano – cello – they have quite the collection at the Manor, you know – I think he did it to drown the thoughts out really, because – well it's harder to listen to the voices in your head when there's music playing, isn't it? Somehow or other he came to get heard, then when Blaise took over from Pansy as his manager he sort of fell into Wizard – Glam Rock and the image became as much a thing as the music. If you're trying that hard to look like something – well you become it a bit, don't you – everything Draco was trying to forget; it's easier under that much make up and costume.”

He hears her, feels her even, but god help him there are flecks of flame amongst those sounds, crackles of fire, red and orange and tawny and bright that lap all the way across his skin and he wonders how he ever forgot the thing he realised that day in the weak sunlight on the bridge that he's repressed ever since. He wants to collapse for it, wants to wail _help me, someone please help me, I am so lost in all the colours of you, every bright thread of my life enmeshed with the colours of yours, disentangling would be harder than dying – harder than life –_ he can feel himself moving closer like someone in a trance, unable to stop his own feet just needing to be closer to the sound and the beauty. It's like his own soul is up there to see in the colours emanating from the makeshift stage – his soul on display – or Draco's – in the moment he's not sure if there's a a difference.

“- Harry!”

He hears Luna's voice as though she's been trying to reach him for a long time. It's only on hearing it that he finds himself registering that the music has stopped, like the loss of it was too much to bear all at once and he's still just standing there staring at the ghost of sound, staring up at Draco on the stage with the cello in front of him, his coat fanned around him like a skirt, and he's frowning down at Harry with an expression Harry cannot read. In Harry's head, for a shockingly vivid moment that probably goes on for far too long, he puts the instrument down, drops down from the stage and turns his face to Harry, eyes glittering and lips a little parted and Harry kisses him right there with the music swirling red and gold in a fire rainbow around them.

But he doesn't.

“Harry -” Luna says again gently, and tugs on his arm and he manages to move, shaking his head as though to rid it of an enchantment.

“I -” he says, but he doesn't know what he wants to say, just that his head is still ringing with a panorama of sound and the colours – he half wants to clutch on to Luna to stay standing – he never saw anything like it. It occurs to him like he's watching himself do it that he's crying. He's not sure for how long he has been, but Luna, when she notices, just nods as though she understands and he's glad it's her, not any of the others.

-x-

Ten minutes later he's lying on his back on the bench he sat on with Draco earlier, sniffing the remnants of the elderflower cordial and wondering how anyone can like this stuff.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Luna perches near him, occasionally giving him an idle pat on the head which is frankly disconcerting rather than anything approaching comforting but he supposes he appreciates the attempt.

“I – I think there's some _weird_ magic in that music.”

“Mmhmm”

“Is that – a thing? Can music be a spell?”

“Sometimes. It _can_ be, yes.”

“I think that was magic.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Like – I couldn't look away – I mean I just had to be nearer to it – always – did _you_ feel it?”

“Everyone feels music differently, Harry.”

“And the colours – did they sound the same to you? I mean – how do they _do_ that?”

“Colours? What colours?”

“You didn't hear the colours?”

“ _Ohhh –_ no I can't do that. Sometimes I smell pictures though. But that's not magic Harry. It's a normal thing. Some muggles get it, too.”

“And the – the – weird magnetic pull?”

“Oh Harry, I don't think that was the music – not as such.”

Harry moans faintly, and looks away so as not to have to meet her sympathetic eye that knows and sees far too much. He _knows_ he's lying semi - prostrate on a bench at the side of the Quidditch pitch and that anyone who wants to can see him here and wonder what the hell he's doing but he cannot seem to find any kind of ability to do anything else. It's like he's _ill_ with it – ill with music and the way it's left him washed out and shaky, his head full to bursting with the way Draco wielded that bow like a wand, sparking magic from the strings that erupted all around him swirling out in tendrils of golden colour. When he closes his eyes, because seeing so much that, after all, isn't really there is far too much for him – he can still see Draco's face as he tilted his head to one sideas he played, oblivious to all but the act of creating that sound. He thinks about the way his lips were slightly parted, the dark red of those lips dusted with gold and the startling white of his teeth. He thinks about the way the sunlight touched his hair, the light playing all over him, running itself all over Draco like it had the right to touch him like that – it seems to Harry quite frankly obscene. He's going to die of this. He is.

“Harry!” He hears Ginny's voice like a crow through the mellow music in his head, hears Luna gently and unsuccesfully trying to disengage her - “Harry, what the hell are you doing! They need you in five minutes!”

“Tell them -” he flaps an arm around - “Tell them I'm dead?”

“Harry James Potter!”

“I _caaaaan't.”_

Ginny swears savagely and imaginatively and stomps off. He breathes again in relief, sinking back into the gold bath of music. It's like being drunk, he thinks, has to be what being on drugs feels like. Maybe he _has_ been drugged. Or Draco's cursed him. Or he's cursed him to feel drugged – either way it's Draco's doing. Foul play, yeah that makes sense.

“Potter! Oi, Potter!”

He moans again softly, wondering what now, and squints up painfully into the sunlight. Oh, Draco's in it, Draco _is_ the sunlight. That makes sense. His sunlight is glaring down at him with hands on hips and an expression of utter disgust.

“Your girlfriend says you're dead,” Draco sniffs. “You _do_ look dead. The fuck are you doing, Potter? She said I had to come and talk to you. So I've talked to you. Now get your arse on your broom or whatever it is you do.”

“You -” Harry sits up, it hurts – _definitely_ like being drunk; he reaches what feels like a far too floppy arm for Draco, wanting - “You do the music.”

“Is he – _you know – well?”_ Draco frowns, turning to Luna. She shrugs – far too cheerfully in Harry's opinion, and smiles -

“He will be now,” she pats Draco on the arm and wanders off.

“Alright -” Draco huffs - “Get up -” he grabs Harry's hand and pulls him to a sitting position - “Get over it – whatever it is – for god's sake get a grip – what are you _doing_ today anyway? First you _talk_ to me, then I turn round from practise and you're standing under the stage gawping up at me like you're waiting for another Snitch to fly into your mouth, and now you're poorly impersonating a Victorian invalid. I say again, are you quite well?”

“Not -” Harry's brain starts to catch up, but not quickly enough. He feels like he's been assaulted – by the music, by the rush of sensation, by the cloud of feelings he's been swimming in – and hasn't he been swimming in them for years? Hasn't this been coming almost since he can think?

“-not my girlfriend,“ he manages.

“O- kay,” Draco nods with infinite patience born only of the opportunity it also provides him to patronise Potter - “I mean -”

“She plays for the Harpies.”

“Yes, well done, she's over them suiting up with them now -”

“No I mean she _Plays for the Harpies –_ and I – don't, you know - play for a regular team either. Except for you know – literally.”

“Wow okay, thanks for that Potter -”

Oh shit, he can't stop – once again he cannot stop staring at Draco's lips, like his drug and its antidote are held there, sparkling in the gold dust; he feels so _hot_ and his palms are itchy – sweaty but the back of Draco's neck is so cool and he doesn't pull away when Harry curls his hand around it, in fact he stares at him with wide wondering eyes for mere seconds before they flutter closed and he utterly unintentionally moves his face towards Harry's. Harry's fingers – desperate to find whatever will still their shaking, cool this heat, brush the edge of Draco's jaw, butterfly brushing their way up his cheek, his thumb finding the edge of those lips and following that edge in wonderment. He wants to find the words to say how beautiful Draco is to him, how beautiful he's always been, words to wonder at how he came to be but instead he just leans in, failing to believe he is allowed this -

“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold -” he says, the words coming up to him out of the depths of something once read, half remembered, out of context, better and more perfect now than they were to begin with - “The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

And he kisses him.

__x__


	7. Chapter 7

**7.**

He lies in bed late that night, utterly unable to sleep, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling and trying to get his thoughts in order. He hardly can his head is still swimming with the memory of kissing Draco. Not just the kiss itself, but the fact that _he did that!_ It hardly feels real; kissing Draco has always been strictly the stuff of late night wank fantasies and rarely even that since _kissing_ didn't always feature that heavily.

So this is his first preoccupation – simple, overwhelming memory of the kiss itself. Every time his heart tries to kick him into panicking for daring it, he remembers the way Draco felt, how he did not pull away, never even slightly, how he's sure- he _is,_ that he was kissing back – he's not entirely sure how it is he cannot remember this clearly – maybe because it still feels like a dream, god he's imagined it for so long it's felt like a memory for much longer than this after all. Then the strange swirling space his head was in, the strange choice of words that had come out of him before he did it – everything like he was under a spell, like it couldn't possibly be real. The more he thinks about it the more it feels to Harry as though it didn't really happen after all.

After the kiss several things happened very quickly. Firstly, he had looked up and there were Ron and Hermione, stood behind Draco, staring at the both of them in shock. He had just stared at them moronically for what felt like far too long, Draco as silent as if he had been stunned, watching him with what had looked like curiosity for what he would do about this, just about registering the dark mercurial flash in his eyes, the blush to his cheeks and the delicious slightly swollen, parted lips that begged him to just carry on kissing.

“Um,” he had said when he could speak – for what it was worth - “Hi.”

Thankfully someone had shouted at him then, in no uncertain terms, to get his arse on his broom right the fuck now, and he had been granted the perfect excuse to run away.

Somehow or other he had played fantastically. Maybe it was autopilot, because he sure as hell did not have a single coherant thought in his head – or maybe that was it – maybe letting go of his thoughts for a second granted him an afternoon of brilliance because he wasn't _thinking,_ let alone his usual state of overthinking anything.

But fuck, he was making up for it now.

What, after all did it mean? What did it signify? Was this love or something very like it? Was he – and he hates even having to ask himself the question, but – as Hermione said to him just before they went to bed- it was perhaps high time he did – was he _in love_ with Draco Malfoy? How long had this been going on? How hadn't he noticed? Did he even _like_ him? Did any of the accessory questions really matter? Did the shifting sense of _was this even real_ even matter when no matter which way he looked at it he couldn't stop thinking about the idiot _and_ his music. And that was another thing -

“It's perfectly normal, Harry,” Hermione had said, seeming glad to be able to reassure him on this part if nothing else - “It's called synesthesia actually, seeing music as colour rather than sound. You can get it with all sorts of combinations of senses – like Luna said.”

“Okay,” Harry had nodded - “Good. Great. Does it usually make you feel drunk though?”

“It sounds like you just had a very – _intense_ experience. Like euphoria – like – like when you've had a really good orgasm and your legs don't work and it feels like you've gone drunk, you know?”

“Umm -” Harry wasn't quite sure what to say to that one – he _doesn't_ know, not about that, but since Ron and Viktor high five smugly over Hermione's head at this comment he assumes it's probably something that only happens when you have sex with other people, and he really doesn't know what to say about that.

“Well, never mind -” Hermione goes on quickly, saving him, glaring at the other two – simultaneously Harry notices, even though it requires her looking to each side of her which takes some mad Hermione-only skill. “I wouldn't worry about it Harry, I just can't believe you hadn't noticed before now.”

“Noticed what?”

“I mean haven't you _ever_ listened to music at all?”

“Honestly not much – always made me feel a bit – I dunno – strange. Besides I've usually had a lot more to think about.”

“That's true, I mean it takes a certain kind of tone deaf to think dancing to Nick Cave is _ever_ gonna cheer anyone up.”

Harry snorts, Ron just looks confused -

“It was in our seventh year,” Harry shrugs. “And it was blue -” Hermione tilts her head to one side with a quizzical look - “Blue and green,” he amends. “It was pretty, like the sea, the colours – they cheered me – I had a moment of feeling like they made me feel better – and it was because of how they looked – huh, I only just realised that. It _didn't_ make sense as a tune to dance to, but the colours – guess they made sense.”

“Music is often cheering me up,” Krum nods, suddenly; Harry hadn't even been sure he was listening, so placid and quiet in conversation it's often easy to forget he's there, but he listens attentively, he knows that, especially when Hermione is talking. She turns round a little to him now with a smile that makes it impossible not to see the affection all over her face -

“Yes?”

“Yes. When I am alone in a strange country and my people – that is you people – are not there – often I am listening to the instruments of Bulgaria and it is comfort, you know?”

“I think -” Harry remembers what Luna said before - “I think that's how it was for Draco. I suppose for me it's just been too much to take in. I like quiet.”

“Me too,” Ron nods - “Guess everyone likes what they don't get enough of – no offence!” he lifts his hands at a glare from Hermione. “I meant back home – the Burrow was always bloody noisy, wasn't it? Nice, yeah – but noisy. Give me a bit of quiet any day.”

“I can go either way,” Hermione shrugs, looking between Ron and Viktor in a way that makes Harry wonder if she's still talking about music. He feels suddenly like he needs to be elsewhere – or that he needs to give them time without him.

“I think -” he says slowly - “I should go to bed. My head's buzzing.”

“You sure?” Ron gives him that _Don't mind us_ face that Harry knows really does just mean _don't mind us_ but still implies an _us_ that he's shut out from, and though that's alright, he does suddenly feel a little jealous – not of any one of them but of the soft, easy affection he cannot possibly imagine having in a romantic relationship. And why is that? A voice niggles at him – _Is it because there's only one person you've ever imagined getting romantic with and soft affection doesn't feel like an option there?_ He sighs internally for the voice to shut up.

“Yeah. I'm cool -” he stands up, stretches ostentatiously - “Night guys. I'm glad you're here.”

Just before he can leave the door Hermione bounces up, whispering something to the others and catches him -

“Harry -”

“Honestly Hermione I'm _fine -”_

“Harry you only ever say you're fine when you're not. You _know_ you have to think about this properly.”

“Think about what?”

She slaps him affectionately around the head.

“You're so obtuse! Both of you! You've been being obtuse for ten years, now that you're finally at least snogging I think it's time to sort it out, don't you?”

“I don't know what you -”

“Harry!”

“Yeshermione.”

“Look,” she says patiently with a sigh. “I know you think we'd all judge you. I know _you_ judge you. I know you think nobody's ever noticed you obsessing over Draco Malfoy. Thing is Harry – we _do_ have _eyes.”_

He blinks at her, a little stunned.

“I _–_ meant that to come out better, _”_ she shrugs apologetically - “But Harry really, it's actually quite terribly obvious you know, whatever it is -”

“So _it's_ obvious but you don't know what _it_ is?”

“Yes. Shut up. Look, love isn't normal; when I was little I thought I'd just sort of find some brilliant boy who lived up to my standards and marry him, you know, just – like you assume everyone does. But I didn't, I found two brilliant boys – and I didn't have to chose between them even though I spent ages thinking I would, then I spent ages thinking it would never work, second guessing myself, writing down lists of pros and cons for every scenario -”

“Um – I can _promise_ you I'm not gonna do that.”

“Well, no, you're not logical. What I'm trying to say is, we'd never judge you and you shouldn't either and you need to just let yourself love whoever you want however much of a twat he is.”

“Um – thanks Hermione.”

“I meant _that_ to sound better too.”

“I love you all and you have many fine qualities,” Harry sighs, but he's smiling as he waves her good night for real this time.

-x-

Now, lying in bed, trying to think like Hermione, he genuinely considers getting up and writing all his feelings down, logically like she suggested. He actually gets up, sits down, stares at a piece of paper, just imagines some of his thoughts actually looking at him with visible words and gets shaky at the thought. All of a sudden the oldest and most habitual idea seems like the best one – he drags the old invisibility cloak out of the bottom of his luggage and sets out on a midnight walk around the castle.

__x__


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

“So _actually -”_ Pansy is saying - “She wanted to _apologise_ \- to _me –_ can you imagine?”

“I'll tell you what I can't imagine,” Blaise sighs deeply. “Someone so successfully enunciating so many italics in one sentence so that people can hear where they go. It's a skill Pans.”

“I dug it,” chirps Luna, from her prostrate pose, head in Pansy's lap on the sofa.

“Thanks sweetie,” Pansy absently runs her fingers through Luna's hair - “Shut up Blaise. I was – okay I was a bit -”

“Nervous?” - Luna.

“Scared?” - Blaise.

“As _if - “_ Pansy snorts. Draco raises an eyebrow but doesn't turn around or say anything to give her away. “But yes, alright -” she admits grudgingly. “I didn't love the idea of seeing our glorious head – not after last time. But the thing is, she _actually_ wanted to explain herself to _me –_ about what she did – when she sent us all to the dungeons. She said she understood why I'd said it, that I was – you know – it wasn't a picnic having the Dark Lord in your head, and I was just saying what half of us were thinking, and – you know, Potter actually came to talk to me today, and said _he_ agreed with me even if no-one else did – he gave himself to the Dark Lord in the end, after all -”

“He told you that?” Draco turns round for the first time.

“Oh my, mention Saint Potter and suddenly he has a face.”

“Shut up.” Draco turns away again quickly.

“So I'll be deciding what I think about _that_ later - ” Pansy says - “Anyway I'm not saying I'm now singing old McGonagall's praises or anything, but she said well – _basically -_ she sent us to the dungeons to keep us safe – because so many of us had family amongst the Death Eaters, she didn't want us to _have_ to make the choice to fight them or not and yes alright, she admitted a lot of us would have chosen the Dark Lord's side but she said she wasn't going to judge that either, not after some of the things she saw – I think she meant _you,_ Draco, actually. Anyway, she'd often thought of it and she said she was glad I was here so she could say it. It was – I mean y'all can shut up, but it was kind of nice.”

“She's a good egg, McGonagall,” Luna nods - “She let me stroke her behind the ears once – as a cat,” she adds when Blaise looks at her funny.

They chatter softly, laughing for a few minutes until Pansy extricates herself from Luna – far more gently than she would really like anyone to have witnessed, and stomps over to near Draco.

“Draco!” she clicks her fingers right in front of his face, making him jump - “Merlin's twat Draco, are you fucking stoned?”

Draco blinks, frowns -

“What's stoned?”

“It's like drunk only with drugs,” Blaise sighs, watching him with a minute frown from what seems to have become his armchair.

“Or like drunk only better,” Pansy smirks.

“Like drunk only stupid,” Luna adds - “What?” She shrugs when Pansy frowns at her - “Stoned is a state of mind, just think yourself into it if you really want to be.”

“Amazing,” Pansy sighs, flopping back down onto the sofa. “Come on Draco, rejoin the living.”

“Helpful,” Draco sighs, rolling his eyes, still looking out of the window. It's strange, the view, because their little lounge area feels so otherwise like the Slytherin common room; but here's the sky outside and the view beyond, they missed out on this as students here. He can see all the way out over the hills, he never really appreciated before how beautiful it was. It hadn't been until his sixth year that he'd really started coming up to the higher parts of the castle and then – well maybe he wasn't ready to be honest with himself about exactly what he was thinking back then, but it certainly hadn't been to appreciate the beauty of the place. He watches the leaves spiral in the October breeze, tries to pick one and follow it until it floats out of view; he follows it for a long time, like watching a Snitch, trying not to get distracted. He can be good at this if he tries, there was only one thing always broke his concentration – and it's the same thing now as when he was playing his first Seeker's games. He sighs, doesn't want to look back at the others, too busy imagining himself as one of those leaves, just content to be flown hither and thither on the air. He misses flying and it occurs to him that a certain amount of aimlessness could be wonderful.

“Seriously Draco,” Blaise comes to stand beside him, eyes following where Draco's eyes go, not looking straight at him, as tends to be his way if they ever _have_ to talk seriously. “Where's your head at, man? You've been in a dream all day.”

“You're complaining? And they always talk about how essential dreaming is to the character of the rock star.”

“I don't care about the character of the rock star Draco, I'm thinking about _you_ here.”

“What's the difference?”

“Oh no you don't. That's for you to work out, and I mean that in all seriousness. You need to start thinking about what you owe yourself, what you want.”

“The first duty in life -” Draco recites, looking at his hand resting on the window ledge - “Is to perfect a pose, what the second duty is -”

“No-one has yet found out. Draco -”

“You expect me to _know?”_

“We all have to work out who we are sooner or later.”

“Easy for you to say you -”

“- worked it out when I was five, yeah. That happens when they assign you the wrong gender at birth and I wouldn't say _easy_ and neither should you.”

“It was sort of a figure of speech. Nothing's ever easy.”

“Merlin Draco, you front a rock band not an emo one, don't _nothing's easy_ me.”

“I'd make a good emo,” Draco murmurs, preoccupied.

“You're not going to talk about it, are you?”

“What?”

“Potter.”

“Not a chance Blaise, not a bloody chance. Think I'm going to -”

“Take a walk? Good idea. Don't be back too late, and don't do anything stupid, okay?”

“Define stupid.”

“ _Draco -_ ” Blaise sighs - “Everyone else may have thought you were being edgy and cool when you talked about jumping off the Astronomy tower all those bloody years ago, but some of us know what those thoughts look like. I've got eyes Draco, please be kind – to me if you can't be to yourself.”

“Pfft,” Draco snorts, though his lips twitch in a stage – ready expression. “I'm not _kind,”_ he sneers. Blaise pats him on the shoulder and rolls his eyes behind his back.

-x-

Draco's not sure, wandering through the castle in the dark, if this was an amazing idea. But it was that or stay and potentially have to try and _talk_ to people, even if they were his friends, even if they _did_ care. Sometimes that was worse. He can't always take people being worried about him, encouraging him to talk about his feelings. He's tried so hard at times in the past, to push everyone away, sometimes he cannot understand why these few still bother. Still, perhaps he _is_ a little grateful for them even if he does wish they could be a little less perceptive at times.

He doesn't think about where he's going, too preoccupied in actually (shut up) doing what Blaise told him and trying to work himself out. It feels like he's been in a daze ever since Potter kissed him, like he'd imagined that happening so many times already it felt like it already had, but then at the same time it changed everything – didn't it? And what was that he'd bloody said? _The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold –_ it was beautiful, it was poetry, it was utterly stolen from Oscar Wilde but that didn't change any of the previous facts. Nobody ever said anything like that to him in his life, it makes him positively weak in the knees that it was Potter.

He didn't mean to come up here; fuck, how he didn't mean to come up here. He stops half way up the staircase, wondering why his treacherous feet have done this to him, what imp in the brain whispered that this was a good idea. Maybe it's hangover from his late night wanderings in sixth year, since that was the only other time he can remember being restless and troubled enough to wander round the castle late at night. Somehow, back then he had come back to this place again and again as though a part of him remembered something that had not happened yet, or he was rehearsing his steps for that final scene.

_Returning were as treacherous as going on –_ he hears the line in his head from somewhere and with it somehow in mind he carries on up the stairs rather than turning back.

-x-

It occurs to Harry that if he still had the map on him, he would probably have used it by now to find out where Draco was, to somehow accidentally quite by chance, without meaning to – have ended up roughly in his vicinity, somehow, of course, quite by chance, without having even _wanted_ to encounter him on his nocturnal ramblings, actually. Yeah.

But he doesn't have the map and his feet lead him outside into one of the courtyards. He wonders if any other student saw the castle by night half as much as he did, if they experienced the smell of leaves by night that was somehow different from during the day, felt the night air which whispers in a different voice for the dark, smelled the night blooming flowers that played with the ivy up the castle walls. The truth is he has come to love the night and the secret hidden things that so often turn out to be so unexpectedly good. Too much evil hides in plain sight; he's known this since he can remember. The night can cradle tender sweetness.

He doesn't believe in fate either, not any more; it was a wonderful thing to throw out, that belief and yet somehow it does seem inevitable that when he looks up at the towers of the school all around him his eyes are drawn to a tiny figure high up in the window to the Astronomy tower. He isn't recognisable from this distance of course; all the same Harry _does_ recognise him, like there's a link between them, a cord, a spell, an enchantment that even now sets his feet towards that place where he is, even though it's the one place he's avoided like the plague ever since he got back here.

Even if the only enchantment really at work here is the way the moonlight shines off that tiny figure's hair – it's still the most powerful spell he's ever been under. So he goes, he goes, he goes.

__x__


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

Draco likes heights; it's like being on stage, being high up, there's a sort of power in it, the only sort of power he has ever felt much of a need to seek it. Maybe because there's so much freedom in it, sicne he has associated height from such a young age with flying. There is always something of that feeling of flying in it, he thinks; close to the ledge with the wind in his face. He should have gone into Quidditch, like Potter.

But it's dizzying being up here, not so much with the fear of falling, though when he stops fighting it he can see Dumbledore going over the edge like it's happening still. He can see that green flash like it still lingers around these walls, hear that voice. He can hear them all up here, Dumbledore's lies, Bellatrix hissing _go on Draco do it –_ his own voice, in retrospect so weak, so insincere. All illusion that he had any choices in the world, any kind of power or strength, had died that night with Dumbledore. Senses, memories, all roll around inside him like a House of Horror ride that he cannot get off – he can see the voices, hear the green, taste the skitter of Dumbledore's wand across the stone. It occurs to Draco that one does not necessarily experience memory with the correct senses. None of it makes sense, and all of it is just one big sensation like threads of a spider's web closing in on him in one big prison. Why come up here? Why? Like the nightmares of that night weren't enough, reliving the sick horror of realising what he'd let into the school, thinking about what he had been sure/ not sure at all he was going to do – imagining taking a life, saying those acid green words _himself –_ he feels sick being up here, like his left arm is itching all over again, he half conciously rolls up his sleeve, holds his arm out to stare at it now like it's somebody elses, not his, this arm stained with deep black, marred by the cresecent scar trying to slice it off gave him two years ago; he feels as detached from his own limb, as though it isn't even real. He frowns, trying to remember that feeling of pride, of tenuous importance at being _chosen_ for something, ever.

( _Expelliarmus!_ He said – _Go on Draco, do it! - We can help you Draco – Avada kedavra!_ He said – and the life went out – _We can help you Draco – there's always a choice - )_

So many lies, he wonders even now if he'll ever trust anything anyone says again – easier to pretend to be someone else, to be Draco Black, the rock star; not Draco Malfoy the frightened boy, pretend it until it becomes the new truth – he needs.

He needs to be elsewhere. This place is terrible for him.

“Why are you here?”

He couldn't have asked it better himself, but he whips around startled at the voice -

“Potter?”

Then he frowns because there's no-one there. Maybe he's going mad, talking to the wind.

“Oh shit -” _then_ there's Potter, pushing a hood off his head and emerging from -

“Really?” Draco stares - “Since when have you had _that?_ ”

“Um – first year?” He at least has the decency to sound guilty about it.

“Well that explains a lot.”

“Um.”

“Sneaking around after me, were you?”

“Not in _first year,_ um -”

“I meant tonight, but do go on.”

“Er – no – and I wasn't – I mean I was – I was just out walking – and -”

“At midnight?”

“So were you!”

“So you just _happened_ to see me up here and think I might be lonely? I don't _get_ lonely, Potter.” It's a lie of course, he's lonely most of the time, has been since he can remember, it just hasn't necessarily mattered for a very long time.

“You shouldn't be _up_ here Malfoy – it's not – it's not good -”

The very fact that he had just been thinking this himself just makes Draco all the more annoyed about Potter's saying it, that and the goody-goody Gryffindor way in which he says it -

“Ugh -” Draco sneers, which is comforting - “Concerned about my moral wellbeing, Potter?”

“No I just – you didn't look happy.”

“Yes I did,” he hears his voice – almost panicky- and tries to change both tone and face accordingly.

“Don't -”

“Don't _what?”_

“You do that thing with your face – like you're closing it. You don't have to do that.”

“Actually, I do.”

“Says who?”

“Says _me._ Man is least himself when he speaks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth.”

“ _You_ live in constant fear of not being misunderstood. Do you _ever_ say anything you mean or thought of yourself these days?”

“Says _the curves of your lips re-write history.”_

He actually has to look away from the play of hurt confusion on the idiot's face; he actually feels mean for spitting those words back at him. He hadn't meant to, but they had made him feel so soft and when Potter had kissed him – they had made him feel like being wrapped up in warm starlight. How could he _not_ be mean about something that undid him like that?

“So -” he says, confused himself now, looking away, coming away from the edge, but still with one hand on the stone - “The music.”

“The – music?”

“Did I fucking stutter? Yes, you heard, you must have – you were gawping up at me from under the stage like you'd never heard music before. You like it. What we do.”

“Yes, I -” he falters, not even ready to _start_ trying to explain how it sounded, how it looked to him - “I didn't even know you played.”

“Hmm. But you don't really know me, do you Potter? Yes, I played, actually I always did – cello, piano, violin, harp – my family has quite the collection – then in those years -” he frowns, how did he start talking about this, how did he dare? He leans with his back to the window and looks down at his hands - “When everything fell apart – when it all changed – we couldn't have music in the house anymore – _he_ didn't like it.”

“He?”

“The Dark Lord -” he flashes Harry a look, one designed to challenge him not to look away without him having to see too deeply himself. “I think he was – I don't know. He hated anything with a hint of goodness in it, happiness – or – or sweetness – because music's not always happy, nor should it be – he hated even the sound of it. We were lucky any of the music collection survived. Or the peacocks. Everything he destroyed he left us _something_ of – just so he could remind us how lucky we were – so we could be grateful and we were, weren't we? Grateful. Pathetic, just like you said.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't – I didn't _know -”_

“Oh please. There was a lot more to worry about than _stuff_ back then, wasn't there? I wouldn't have expected you to – well, you can't compare experiences, can you? Still the peacocks – they were living – father and I were in constant terror he'd found out how many we had hidden before -” he swallows hard - “I don't know why I'm still talking.”

“Because you always did like to?”

The corner of Draco's lip turns up -

“Sit down Potter, you look confused.” He sits down himself, back to the wall, and Potter frowns once and sits down beside him.

“Tell me about the peacocks. I didn't know you kept -”

“I suppose yours wasn't the friendliest visit to the home, was it?” Draco's lips twist - “It was father's thing really. You'd be surprised. Of course he started getting them because it looked good, just like with everything, but we grew attached to those peacocks, all of us, even got to like the noise they made -”

“I don't -”

Draco grins. Harry sees a glint in his eye he thought never reappeared these days, and he makes the most apalling, ear splitting noise -

“ _Very_ like that. Ghastly. Woke me up in a sweat when I was little I can tell you. But they got to liking us and we got to like them. Snowball even slept on the end of my bed sometimes when the others were picking on him.”

“Snowball?”

“Shut up Potter, I was ten. He was my favourite, had one tail feather that kept growing green – every time father would pull it out so he didn't _spoil the look_ it grew out the same. Anyway -” he sighs heavily, coming to the bad bit - “Sometime – well alright it was Christmas, start of seventh year, the Dark Lord decided to put peacock on the menu. Organised a hunt in the grounds. He was _raging_ when he never found a single peacock, not _crucio you all_ raging, but raging. Still never guessed we'd hidden them in a drawer in my mother's dressing table.”

“A drawer?”

“Undetectable extension charm. The peacocks were raging about it too, of course, you can probably imagine, but at least they got to live. Only victory over him my father and I ever won.” Even knowing how ridiculous it is doesn't stop him from still feeling that flash of defiant pride.

“I don't know why I told you that. It's nothing to actually fighting back, I know, not a big thing - but I'm not interested in hearing what you think of us – just in case you were going to -”

“Hey! Hey I wasn't. Actually I think it _was_ fighting back. Besides it was a big thing for the peacocks, wasn't it? You saved them. That's twelve lives still lived because of you. It's not nothing.”

“Yeah well -” he looks away again, cringing from the brightness of admiration he can see in those green eyes - “I never did like for a thing to die. Not if I could help it.”

“I know. You saved _me,_ remember?”

“I most certainly did -”

“ _And_ you didn't kill Dumbledore – even when it meant risking yourself.”

“How do you know about that?” Suddenly he's wary, half rising, half ready to bolt, but Potter grabs his wrist before he can get up.

“I was here,” he shrugs. “I heard everything. I shouldn't have – I mean -” he fumbles for the words to say, he doesn't find quite the right ones, and what comes out is - “I was a dick to you that year. I should have known better. All that time I spent thinking about you – you have no idea – and I still never figured you out.”

“What, and you have now?”

“I figured something out -” Harry sighs; after all, he's been waiting three years to say this - “The evening after the battle of Hogwarts. You _didn't_ have just that one victory over Voldemort, you know. I killed him with _your_ wand – oh speaking of which -” he gets it out of his pocket - “I suppose it's time I gave you this back.”

Draco takes it, half in a daze, stares at it, feels the length of it in his hands for a long time, turns it around wonderingly -

“You've used this all this time?”

“Yeah – it – felt right. It's worked for me. But it's yours. I should have given you it sooner but -”

“Keep it,” Draco hears himself say it before he realises he's doing it, but he hands it back before he can stop himself.

“No -”

“ _Keep it –_ you should, and my mother's – well I never stopped using hers, _it_ works for _me –_ she got a new one. So it's fine.”

“Draco I – thank you.”

“Don't pee yourself, Potter, it's not a – I mean you know, just – do you know I don't think you ever said that before?”

“What, thank you? It's not me who never says -”

“No you tosser, I meant my name.”

“Draco -”

When Draco turns his head he finds their faces are suddenly very close together and he is breathing the air of his own name from Potter's lips.

“I _have_ said it before, you know,” he says gently in what it occurs to Draco is a terribly Slytherin move because in listening to what Potter's saying he does not notice the hand that cups his face like it's the most fragile of things for at least a second and somehow – like it's a spell Harry's casting, he's leaning in and their foreheads are touching and it feels earth shattering, this tenderness, like it might kill him and he can barely breathe.

“Not to me.”

“No it was – when I said – after the battle – when I realised – I realised you'd been master of the Elder wand all along and – you never even thought of it, never even reached for that power – I realised that I -”

“Wait -” Draco frowns, pulls back a little - “Wait - I was the _what_ of the _what?”_

“The Elder wand – after you disarmed Dumbledore -”

“The _Elder wand?_ From the fairytale? What the _fuck,_ Potter?”

“Oh my god.” He didn't know. It had never occurred to Harry before. He didn't know any of it. He leans back against the wall, wondering whether to be relieved or sad that Draco stopped him just before he finished that sentence – _I realised that I loved you –_ because honestly he had not realised there was even a part of him that had been ready to say that. But _shit –_ he didn't know any of it – about the tale of the three brothers, the Elder wand, the horcruxes, none of it – he takes a deep breath.

“I guess – I guess I need to tell you some stuff.”

“Eloquent as ever, Potter,” Draco murmurs but he leans back against the wall again and lets him begin.

\--x--

**So, I was on the brink of quitting this fic cause idk, i was just kinda feeling like i'd lost the plot and I was pining for feedback and figured no-one liked it and blah blah moment - of - crisis - but this morning I got a really nice comment on it and it inspired me to put the next chapter up so here it is! I dooo have the next three written already so I swear I will post the next one sooner if I can just get my faith back in it! :-) And just yeah, HUGE thanks to the person who commented, convincing me to continue! :-)**


	10. Chapter 10

**10.**

“- so I realised – and I realise I was kind of slow – that when you disarmed Dumbledore you became Master of the Elder wand, and for all practical purposes what that meant was that _I'd_ become it's master when I disarmed you, but it also meant – well it meant you _had_ that power – or you could have – but it never even called out to you, did it? You never for one second thought to pick up that wand with all the power it contained, and Voldemort – he was prepared to kill the world for that wand but you – so you see – that was when I realised that I loved you.”

“I -” Draco blinks. “That wasn't how I expected that to end.”

It wasn't what Harry had expected to hear himself say either, even though he had been ready to only minutes before. He still finds himself breathless, shocked to have said it just like that. He supposes that if he had thought at all he would have assumed he'd be another three years at least dithering about it, getting frustrated by it and constantly semi – convincing himself that it wasn't true after all. He never thought it would come out like that, so matter of fact, but in truth it has been a matter of fact this whole time and everyone else has known it too.

“Yeah,” he says, looking down at his lap - “Me neither.”

“You love me.”

“Yeah -” he risks a cautious sideays glance, but Draco's face is that bewildering blank that he both uses for truth and hides behind. “I wanted to tell you straight away – when I realised – but I couldn't find you and there was so much happening -”

“No -” Draco's voice sounds distant. “We'd left. We got out, I dunno – seconds after I threw you the wand; mother kind of dragged us – she knew the Dar- _Voldemort_ would have killed us all for what _she_ did, never mind what _I_ did – me, I – I was just confused - about whose side we were on, I suppose – I mean no, I wasn't confused – I'd known really – since Easter, when they brought you to the Manor. I just couldn't even _think_ it. It wasn't safe. So -” he comes back round - “You love me. Because I'm – _was – powerless?”_

Harry can see thunderclouds brewing in Draco's eyes and where that once provoked him into an urge to chase down the storm it now kicks into his chest with an _uh – oh_ thud.

“No, it wasn't that. It was – and anyway it had been coming on for so long – I - that is – since I can remember - but then you – it all proved that you were _good_ as well – in this stupid world where all I knew were these power-mad arseholes using us as pawns in their games, and all you wanted was not to hurt anyone and to stay safe – it was all I wanted too, you know.”

“Is this the part where you tell me we could have been friends this whole time?” Draco sounds – he _feels_ in all honestly like he would be heartbroken now if that _was_ the case.

“Hell no – you were a dick. Besides being enemies was so much more fun, wasn't it? But we weren't enemies like that – you never wanted to use me or control me, you just wanted to piss me off and call me stupid shit – and you never cared about all that _chosen one_ crap -”

“Oh I _cared,” D_ raco hears himself murmur bitterly.

“But you didn't, I dunno – put me on some kind of pedestal like every fucker else, never expected anything of me – you have no idea how refreshing that was.”

“So you love me because I'm powerless and refreshing.” Draco swears quietly. “It's not all that, is it?”

“Fuck's sake – what do you _want?”_

“Potter, if you love me, fucking _love_ me – I want -” something hungry growls and leaps in his chest - “I want _everything.”_

“God yes -” Harry almost whimpers it, and his mouth is on Draco's and Draco can feel the thing in his chest fucking clawing to get through, to break through him into Harry and scratch them both to pieces and wrap them up together in the tatters of their former selves; he reels with the force of how much he wants. They grab at each other very like a fight and he feels positively furious with lust and neediness, and for a while he lets it be all he feels rather than having to fight the thing in his head, which tells him in a snooty, logical voice that it's not true, of course; Potter cannot possibly love _him,_ so he wants and hopes instead, and craves and clings.

“Everything?” Potter breathes, holding the back of his head, pushing himself as close as he can to Draco given the shitty angle they're at.

“Everything -” he whimpers - “Want me. Need me. Love me -” he stops himself just before he says _please;_ just barely making it a demand and not a plea.

“I do.” It sounds to Harry like a marriage vow. Draco swears softly and closes his eyes for headiness, reeling back into the kiss like the first one had just been a taste, one that had made him hungrier for more, and he can't stop once he's started, can't control his movements, his need for this; it's not like a dream this time, not like this morning, it's visceral and rough and angry and mean, like one of them could still turn this into a punch up at any moment and it's _amazing –_ it's what he's thought about for far too long and – is it really true that it wasn't just him? He moans into the kiss, from loss and wasted time as well as need. He thinks about how long he's thought about this, all those guilty wanks and constant streams of thought, thinks about an obsession that he never could categorise as love or hate since he was tiny and first heard the words _chosen one._ It feels to him now as though over the years he had wanted every different possibility – he had been jealous, wished it were him, wished they could be friends,w ished the bloody Chosen One had died in his crib, wondered what he was like, wanted to grow up with him, wishing they never met, unable to wait until the day they went to school together – all of that before they ever even met. He'll have to explain this, but his head aches just imagining how to start – _you have never not been in my life, you know that?_ It enrages him that there was a time when he was not in Potter's.

Then there's that part of him that has always thought of Potter as _his –_ or if not fully thought, it then wanted it to be the case. After fifth year, after everything he knew went away, nothing he had, not an object not a thought, not a single thing felt safe; after their house was taken over – it all felt desecrated by the Dark Lord's presence – nothing was _his_ any more. He had no rights to anything. He wants to own Potter now more than ever – his hands move hard against him, slipping up under his shirt, palms aching to claim every inch of him, and Potter shifts under his touch to bring them closer, pulling Draco into his lap and looking up at him as his hand slides up his spine – looking up at him with stars in his eyes. So many starry-eyed glances thrown his way in the last two years and not a single one had ever touched him, ever made him feel anything beyond a faint satisfaction, but this – this was what he'd been waiting for, _Merlin –_ he'd been waiting his whole life. He rocks forward and can feel how hard Potter is under him, how fucking big he must be beneath his trousers, and he knows as he feels it that Potter must be feeling him too and one more rock will brush their cocks together and he'll probably fucking come just from that. His head falls back, eyes closed in bliss as he offers up his neck for the kissing. He doesn't even need to offer, it is taken anyway, hot lips on his throat and just the hint of teeth. He can hear his own breath coming out in gasps, echoing round the awful stone walls. He heard his own breathing here once before, just as loud but it was panicked then, like a frightened animal facing down death, and that was crazy when you thought about it, because wasn't he the one threatening death?

The memory of that panic, that fear shoots through him like a sudden nightmare, a flashback onto horror and his own sigh turns into a suddenly screamed -

“ _Depulso!”_ that sends Potter shooting away from him and himself sprawling back on the stone in recoil and leaping to his feet like a whirlwind, taking several skittering steps back, wiping his mouth like the taste of Potter was the worst and not the best thing in the world, and Potter's standing up slowly, wincing and staring at him in shocked confusion.

“What the fuck?” he's frowning, taking a step towards Draco, hands turned up in bewildered pacification like he's trying to talk to a horse that just threw him. Draco skitters back hard until he's standing at the top of the stairs.

“I can't – I -” he has to get out of this place - “I'm sorry I can't – not here -”

He turns and runs then, hurtling down the stairs just like last time, and he knows logically he can hear Potter shouting after him to wait but it sounds terribly like the after echo of _avada kedavra_ screaming green around the tower and Bellatrix's shrieks and whoops ringing loudly in his ears.

**__x__**


	11. Chapter 11

**11.**

“Honestly Pansy, can we _not_ talk about this? Right now? I have rehearsal.”

“Draco, you always have rehearsal. So you kissed and then what?”

“Then I _Depulso'd_ him and ran. I already told you, fuck off.”

“Draco, sweetheart, my love, that is _not_ a normal way to end a kiss. _Why?_ You freaked out, didn't you?” She sighs this finally, impatient and not ready to dance around it further. Also Draco's gold dragonscale effect trousers are glinting in the sunshine so brightly it's hurting her eyes. If they don't give her a headache this conversation will.

“Yes.” Draco stops, shoulders stiff, not turning to face her, staring out past the standing stones to the forests below - “Yes fine, alright, I freaked out. Happy now?” He drops his head and she can see the tell – tale pink steal up the back of his neck. But she's her, she doesn't care if he _is_ embarrassed, she needs to know and more to the point he needs to say it.

“Because it's Potter, right? Because you've loved him and hated him since fucking first year and you want this but you're also confused, right?”

“Pans -” he sighs and this time he does turn round, leaning against the stone – Granger punched him here once, he rememebrs with sudden bizarre detachment. He sighs heavily. She leans against the nearest stone, one foot crooked up against it, waiting. She takes a cigarette case from her back trouser pocket and offers it to Draco before taking hers. He shakes his hand absently at first and then sighs again – this time at her -

“You do that every time. You know I don't smoke and neither should you.”

“Ugh, what are you my great aunt Bessie? Shut up,” she breathes smoke into his face, he turns his nose up with a sniff and leans his head away.

“So I'm right then?” she arches an eyebrow after a smoke filled pause.

“No,” he turns back to her, smiling wryly and faintly unhappily, pale gloss lips twitching - “That's the thing, Pans. Not that your charming faux-psych analysis was wrong, per se – but it _wasn't_ that – it was -” _sigh -_ “It was the place. Fucking panicked, didn't I?”

“The Astronomy tower, yeah? Panicked as in real panic attack, yeah?”

“Real panic attack. Yeah. Thanks Pans.”

“Because of – you know.”

Draco breathes out – he'd been briefly terrified, but it turns out even Pansy is too sensitive to finish _that_ sentence.

“Yeah.” He slides down the stone, not caring what the moss and rock do to the back of the cream waistcoat, and holds his face in his hands. “It was like I was bloody well back there,” he whispers very quietly. Pansy waits.

“Like it was all happening again. I could _hear_ them. That were there. My aunt -” she watches the shudder go through him; he looks so frail when he shivers, so small it hurts her. He steadies himself. Looks up at her with eyes that seem massive in his pale face, sparkling with wetness and starry glitter eye makeup -

“He'll think it was him though, won't he? He'll think I was being a dick. As usual.”

“Probably. He's not very bright.”

“Great. Thanks Pans, you're very comforting.” He holds out a hand, she hauls him back to his feet -

“Turn around.”

He turns around.

“Merlin's tits, Draco – _tergeo,”_ she waves her wand at his back. “I'm not here to be comforting love, I'm here to be a bitch and give actual support.”

Draco smiles, again unhappily though there's a huff of weak amusement in there this time.

“So,” she goes on. “You gonna talk to him before or after tonight's show?”

“Never?”

“Draco!”

“I guess – before?”

“Good boy,” she nods. “Come on, let's not keep Blaise waiting, he'll have a fucking hernia if you're late again.”

“Thanks, mother.”

“Shut it, Bessie.”

_x_

“For the last time Harry – you didn't _do_ anything, I'm sure!”

“You're not listening Hermione – I must have – I shouldn't have – I was too fast, wasn't I? I shouldn't have – I dunno – poured out my entire heart? Or I shouldn't have kissed him? At least one – maybe both? He fucking _depulso'd_ me! Wandlessly!”

“And he said _not here,_ yes? So did it occur to you it was the place, not you?”

“The place? You think? Why would that freak him out?”

“Do you want the long list or the short one?”

“Tell me you don't have _actual_ lists.”

“She will have lists,” Viktor smiles benignly, kissing Hermione on the top of the head as he walks by - “She is loving the lists.”

“I _don't_ have written lists, _no,_ but seriously Harry -”

“Are you guys coming or not?” Ron calls from the door.

“In a bit!” Hermione calls - “You go ahead, warm up, we'll be down in a minute.”

“Great,” Harry groans as they leave - “Because Viktor wasn't going to _murder_ me in our seeker's game already without practising with Ron first.”

“Pfft. Ron won't even _challenge_ him as a seeker. You know he wouldn't see a snitch if it was flapping in his face. He's a keeper – in every sense of the word. Bless him. _You_ need to work out what you're doing with Draco.”

“Urghhhhhh,” Harry groans, long and heavy, and sinks back into the armchair he only recently managed to haul himself out of. “I thought I _had._ What if he just regrets it and doesn't want to talk to me?”

“Harry, we've already been through this a hundred times this morning, then you went through it twenty times more with Ron and a couple with Viktor and we all told you the same thing.”

“I won't know anything unless I try? I _know._ I still hate it.”

“Harry – everything you've done. You're the saviour of the wizarding world -”

“Please don't -”

“You destroyed the Dark Lord! You battled a basilisk when you were twelve -”

“- please, Hermione, you can send me twenty more before I have to speak to Draco Malfoy again.”

Hermione folds her arms and glares at him, tapping her foot in otherwise silence until he groans an gets up.

“I'm _going.”_

“Well done.”

-x-

“I _said_ we had to get moving sooner,” Pansy grumbles, still dithering by the standing stones, waiting for Draco - “I can see bloody Weasley now and I don't think we can get away – who's that he's with?” she peers against the glare of the sun upwards towards the castle - “Ohhh -” she breathes -

“Oh _my -”_

By the time Ron and Viktor reach them, it is to walk in on Pansy trying unsuccesfully to hide behind Draco, blushing furiously as he moves aside too quickly for her to counter.

“Malfoy” Ron nods at him, not quite curt, not quite friendly, but in the faintly embarrassed recollection of all their conversations with Harry before coming out.

“Weasley,” - uttered in similar tones.

“You've met Viktor, yeah?”

Draco sniffs a little, but it's the only expression he cannot stop himself making; he manages to look otherwise like he gets personally introduced to his heroes every day.

“We've – never been introduced – no,” he manages, proud of how cool it comes out.

“A pleasure,” Viktor takes his hand and shakes it enthusiastically - “I know your music of course. This song _Fiendfyre –_ I am listening to it right before the last match against Greece. Is in my head the whole time. Beautiful. I am looking forward to the show tonight – is first time I am seeing you live.”

“I only wish I was cool enough to say the same,” Draco says, surprising each and every one of them including himself with it - “I've seen you of course – World Cup against Ireland, and of course the Triwizard tournament. Very big fan, you know.”

“I have heard so much about you, of course -” Viktor breaks off, aware of a rudeness and turns to Pansy - “And you are Miss Pansy of course, Luna's beloved? It is a pleasure to meet you,” he holds out a hand. Pansy squeaks and goes bright red. Draco cannot help but smirk; Pansy flustered is a sight none of them have ever seen before. After an excrutiating moment in which she forgets how handshakes happen she puts her hand in Viktor's – and it hangs there limply. He smiles and shakes for them both.

“I am hearing only good things about you too, of course. Any friend of Luna's -” he smiles benignly, givign Pansy a chance to reply.

“Ngk,” Says Pansy eventually and then just as cleverly - “Gnnnnnn -”

“Well we'll catch you later,” Ron says, saving her. A little way down the hill they turn round hearing a wailing squawk of a noise, to see Pansy banging her head against a rock and Draco simultaneously patting her on the shoulder and shaking with laughter.

“Often when I go by the girls are doing this -” Viktor sighs, frowning and shaking his head - “Never have I understood.”

“Beats me mate. We all know Weasley is king of the quidditch pitch.”

“It does not beat you. I am beating you.”

“In your dreams man, in your dreams.”

-x-

“Come _on_ Pans -” Draco's eyes are glittering. “What was that about _needing to get a move on?”_

“Blerghk -” Pansy croaks, still bizarrely angled with her forehead planted firmly in a stone. Draco looks around a little nervously.

“Seriously -” he sighs, trying not to sound as nervous as he might feel - “You know where his little friends go, Potter's never far behind – I don't -”

Pansy makes another moan that this time sounds like -

“ _Krummm -”_

“Yes. There there. Actual Krum. We've all been there. Remarkably friendly chap, _I_ thought – seriously Pans get _over_ it – _I_ did -”

“Ah fuck off Draco, you never _had_ it – you were too busy drooling over some skinny twink Gryffindor back when were all supporting Krum -”

“I'm sure I don't know what you -”

“Draco. Mate. The denial. It's getting _old_ my friend. It's old.” But she turns round and leans back against the stone instead.

“At last. She speaks. She moves.”

“Shut up.”

“Aww fuck Pans, they're coming, let's get out.”

“Oh my fuck, is widdle Draco running away?”

“Shut the _fuck_ up Pansy.”

“Is he a _coward?”_

“Yes. Cowards together, let's _go!”_

But it's too late, Harry and Hermione are on them before they can move and Draco finds himself staring at Potter like a rabbit in headlights.

“Ah,” Hermione says for all of them. “Malfoy. Parkinson. Delighted.” She elbows Harry painfully obviously.

“Erm,” he says. Pansy snorts. Draco slaps her. She shoves him back.

“My goodness, is that Ron and Viktor down there? I suppose I should go catch them up since they've only got this far as it is. Goodbye!”

She walks off at a brisk pace that leaves Harry no room to follow or object.

“Yeah I'm – I'm with Granger.”

Pansy turns on her heel only just slow enough for Draco to get out a -

“ _Whaaat?”_ before she goes the same way, leaving the two boys staring at each other in awkward terror and then staring at the floor until Draco says -

“So,” and Harry says -

“Yeah,” simultaneously.

“I should -” they both say, then stop. Harry waves a hand for Draco to go on, Draco wishes he hadn't.

“I suppose I should -”

“Look -” Harry tries to help him - “What I said -”

“It wasn't that -” Draco waves it away - “It was the place -” he stops, suddenly remembering exactly what it _was_ Harry had said.

“You said you loved me.” He keeps his voice very carefully neutral.

“Yeah,” Harry tries to copy the tone, but his voice shakes betraying him.

“I guess that didn't go well -” Draco says slowly - “Astronomy tower date, I mean – do you want -” he licks his dry lips; he has never felt so courageous and so scared. “Do you want to try again?”

“Are you – asking me on a date?”

“Would you say yes?”

“Is that a yes?”

“What is this, the Questions game?”

“You win.”

“Well, would you?”

“Tonight?”

“After the show. Yeah. Do you know the attic window off the fourth floor North East stairway? The one that leads onto the roof?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll meet you there after the show.”

“Alright.”

“Now I have rehearsal.”

“I'm going that way to practice with Viktor.”

“Alright.”

They head towards the Quidditch pitch, hands not exactly touching, but when their steps do brush their fingers together neither actively pulls away.”

-x-

““Oh _Potter_ -”” from a subtle vantage point just a little down the hill, Pansy and Hermione watch as Draco and Harry tentatively begin to talk, unable to actually hear the words - ““ _Potter –_ I hate you so much, so much that I talk about you all the time and bug the shit out of all my friends wondering what stupid thing you're doing next.””

““God Malfoy, who are _you_ calling stupid? _You're_ stupid and all I ever do is hate you, yes hate, that's it, absolutely -”” Hermione is surprised to hear herself playing along with Pansy's dubbing of the conversation. Pansy hides her own surprise with a snort before she continues.

““Hate hate hate, I bet I hate you more Potter, with your stupid hair and your muggle specs you great _insert lame insult here.””_

““Look Malfoy if you can't think of a better way to insult me I won't apologise for completely effing up last night.””

““ _You_ won't apologise? Ha well _I_ won't apologise _first e_ ven though I'm the tit who depulso'd a tit – seriously Granger you say _effing?”_

“Not – always.” Hermione gives a defensive little pout - “They really _are_ idiots aren't they?”

“Just glad y'all had to put up with it too,” Pansy sniffs then goes a little quiet as she catches Hermione's eye. They go quiet for a minute, awkward; Pansy actually catches herself scuffing the grass with the toe of her shoe.

“Look Granger -” she says eventually, not looking her in the eye again - “I was a bit rotten to you in school -”

“ _That's_ putting it nicely.”

“Yeah well, I don't do apologies -”

“But this is the part where you tell me you really wished you'd been me?”

“Ugh _no -”_ Pansy scowls so enormously it's absolutely clear to them both that she _might_ have been thinking of saying that - “Not with that hair. But you're smart and you have a really hot boyfriend now and it might -” she sticks her nose as high in the air as it will go and puts on her father's best and snootiest public speaking voice. “It might behove us to communicate more in the future concerning certain persons who may require our assistance.”

“They need help, don't they?” Hermione's lips pull in a smile.

“They need help. Shit they're coming, let's vamoosh.”

“For the record -” Hermione says, grinning a suprisingly Slytherin smile as they head towards the Quidditch pitch at speed - “You meant Ron, of course?”

“Fuck off, Granger,” Pansy huffs back, a surprisingly Gryffindor glint in her eyes.

__x__


	12. Chapter 12

**12.**

The Great Hall is heaving when Harry walks in, every student, teacher and visitor apparantly in attendance for _Dragontongue's_ performance that evening. There hasn't been a feeling in this room, Harry thinks, since the Yule Ball in his fourth year, a million years ago. He never expected it to ever feel like this again and it maks him smile to see the younger students chattering and laughing like he had once given up hope of seeing again at Hogwarts. After the war – after the battle of Hogwarts, after hearing the stories of kids who were first years when it happened – no, he never expected the school could go back to this again, and it makes him feel warm and complicated inside to think that a lot of it tonight is down to Draco. Someone shouts his name and he turns around.

He's not entirely surprised to see Pansy and Luna in a group with Hermione, Ron and Krum but he _is_ a little surprised to see Pansy in tentative conversation with Hermione while Luna teaches Viktor some sort of clapping game, Viktor watching and listening intently to try and understand it. Ron says something to him he doesn't hear over the din of chatter.

“What?” he strains to listen.

“I said, thank god you're here, mate! S'all getting a bit girly round here!”

“There's Viktor -”

Ron makes a noise that sounds more like a genuine _Phaugh!_ Than Harry has ever heard anyone achieve -

“He's the worst of the lot,” Ron sighs affectionately.

After a few more _what's_ and _I can't hear you's_ there is a crashing sound like lightning and the room plunges into darkness. He hears Pansy whisper _dramatic little fuck!_ as glitter in every imaginable colour rains from the ceiling. The room fills with whispers, squeals, laughter and gasps as it settles on them all and still hangs in drifting rainbows through the dark above their heads for some time. Then there's a second crash and a bright white beam of light illuminates a figure on the stage as though they have just beamed down from outer space. He hears Luna squeal _Oooooh!_ and feels her grab Pansy's arm next to him excitedly as Pansy nods in reply and they both squeal _he's going to do the new one!_ They say something else, laughing, that he does not catch because he's riveted towards that stage – him, he supposes, and just about everyone else in the hall and he wishes desperately that he had not been so late down so he could have got closer to the front – although the front, as far as he can tell is mostly screaming first years who look like they might faint from excitement. The lighting widens and shifts and the colours of Draco beam out cross the room in prisms of light. The shiny black of the outfit conceals more rainbows than colour ever could and his hair shines silver, some trick of the light making it look as though there are tiny stars swirling out from him, drifting through the rainbows.

_Soooo extra –_ he hears Pansy murmur, and he almost smiles but he's too entranced, caught like a butterfly in a net of rainbow and silver stars.

Then Draco starts to sing and a lonely electric guitar vibrates through the hall. Harry does not catch the words of the song but it's purple and silver and he never heard anything so haunting and sweet, so hopeful and lonely and reaching out all at once. He's crying when it comes to an end, because of the beauty and because it has finished. Apart from the tears he never stopped staring at Draco for a single second – the way he _moves_ on that stage – like he's walking on starlight. The hot crystal of his voice and its dangerous, deeper undertow. Draco is a river that could cleanse him of every ill or drag him to his death and he aches with pride and hope thinking – _you could be mine,_ he closes his eyes – _please, please, please be mine._ When he opens his eyes again, blinking hard he catches Pansy watching him curiously for just a split second before she looks away.

Draco slips straight into the second song and each song after it, never speaking to the audience. Every line of him seems to glow from the admiration but he never for a moment acknowledges their existence with a word or even much of a glance. Harry wonders if it's part of the act or if he has no idea what he would say, to _Hogwarts_ especially. He wonders how Draco feels being here, being here like this, what it means. It occurs to him that he has never wondered enough about Draco's own feelings.

The second song _Sectumsempra_ is louder, the whole band moving in, crashing waves of anger in the tone and in this one Draco does seem to look out across the audience as though looking for somone to blame. Towards the end the lighting appars to paint lines in silver and gold slashes across his chest and when the false start hisses back into a whisper Harry could swear Draco was staring right at him. The lights go down and he feels a terrible weird churning of guilt.

_Fiendfyre_ is next, a two second dip in the lights apparently being enough for Draco to disappear and reappear with a complete change of costume – a silver variant on what he was wearing that morning. It's angry, but not as angry as _Sectumsempra_ , all yellows and reds and gold, the music and the lights. At the end, just when everyone else is gasping because the flame snake is convincing enough to frighten a lot of the audience, the effect is ruined – at least for Harry and Pansy beside him- by a voice behind them and a hand on each of their shoulders and they both turn to see Blaise who's grinning and nodding -

“Nailed it,” he says - “Alright Potter?”

He gives Harry the same curious look that Pansy had and drifts off before waiting for an answer. Harry spares half a frown in wondering hat it is they're both looking at when they look at him like that – but not more than half a frown of half a moment of wondering because he cannot tear his eyes, ears or mind away from Draco, how could anyone? He's riding the sky on rainbows, bathing in changing coloured lights. It's a dream, Draco's dream and he is in it. He wonders if the colours he sees are the colours of Draco's thoughts and he's spinning at how beautiful they are and then -

\- then he comes crashing back to earth and there's a dartk mark in the air above their heads, a horrible wavery green that makes a lot of them – especially towards the back of the room where the older students are – gasp and look around nervously.

“Chill your tits, Potter!” Pansy yells over - “It's just _Morsmordre!”_

“I _know?”_ he yells back, confused that even she could imagine he would not know that symbol anywhere.

“No you wazzock, the _song “Morsmordre”!”_

“Oh,” he nods as though this explains everything and it does, he supposes, but it _hurts,_ it fucking hurts his head, this song when the music starts – all that green floating above the stage and the smoke around Draco and the band in the same sickly shade but the song itself – _shit_ the song itself is a deep rich purple and they clash so terribly it gives him a hadache. From the second he saw that symbol he had been expecting an attack, and sweet Merlin on a bike what did Draco think he was doing using that – even as an illusion – _here_ of all places? But then the music swishes out like a wand casting a healing spell, the colours wrap around him in what feels like an apology, and Draco – the lighting makes his own dark mark stand out stark black on white and it doesn't look evil, it never did on him, no matter what he might have once thought or still thinks- just startlingly beautiful and edgy and raw, as though it was his skin he had rolled up not his sleeves, exposing his heart to the world. All of a sudden he's transported back to the Astronomy tower that night and he can see the fear and fury on a face trying to twist those things into pride as he exposed that mark for the first time and he realises with complete clarity why he ran away so hard last night.

On the stage, Draco twists his body around the song, like it hurts him to get it out but he _has_ to get it out; it looks to Harry like the way he felt every time he had that urge to break things. He can't hear all the words but there's the phrase _sorry_ and _not sorry_ over and over again and then that chorus -

_For the lost for the lonely for the ones without a voice_

_This is a song for all of us who never were given a choice -_

\- and it doesn't matter how sick the green lighting and the purple music makes Harry feel, his heart breaks a little and he wants to whimper _Oh Draco –_ out loud in understanding and through his violent blinking he sees Pansy scrutinising him out of the corner of her eye, sees her give a tiny nod of satisfaction- _good –_ to know that he gets it, after all this time.

So it feels like the sun coming up, like a dawn breaking when the next song starts, the rainbows and stars from the first song filtering back down from the ceiling, washing away the green smoke and the dark mark slowly, like rain sluicing dirt from a window. It feels like he can breathe again and this sense of relief, of joy sems to fill the whole hall, the audience whispering again and smiling all around him as the light comes in, growing and growing until it fills the room and the song that is sung is the same one as in the beginning, almost, but, as far as Harry can tell, with a halo lining of silver and gold.

-x-

The applause takes a long time to die down, carrying on long after Draco has disappeared – yes, in a flash of lightning from the stage. There's no encore, just the lights of the hall returning to normal and Harry feels so many things all at once he wishes he could lie down – washed clean, washed out, taken to hell and back; or to heaven – he's not sure. It feels like they have all been forgiven by this music in a circle of absolution between Draco and the whole school.

“Wow,” Harry says, intelligently when he finally finds a word. It's nowhere near good enough but he supposes he has to try.

“Yeah,” Pansy says - “Wow. Right? Catching up to things, are we Potter?”

“Umm -” he's not certain how much she really seeks a reply. She just shakes her head at him -

“Go,” she says, shooing him with hand gestures - “Go on get out of here. You have a date on the roof most of this room would _murder_ you for. Get out before I give you up to their mercies next!”

“'Cause surrendering me to anyone who wants a piece of me -” he cannot believe they're joking about this but apparantly they are and it feels brilliant.

“It's – what I do Harry,” she laughs back, kindly, the first time he's ever heard her do that - “Get used to it – go on, piss off!”

He's grateful for her laugh as he goes because his heart is doing such flip flops, his stomach fluttering butterflies – he's not sure he could have functioned without that laughter. As he heads out he can hear Ginny's voice as she and Taz drift over to talk to Luna and Pansy. Nearby Blaise is seeking feedback from Ron and Hermione, Viktor more effusive in his praise than they have ever heard him. Harry could never have imagined this, all these so very disparate people getting on – it feels like a spell, and if it is he is fairly certain it is one that Draco has cast on them.

__x__


	13. Chapter 13

**13.**

Ridiculously, Draco feels nervous. He stands by the old battlements, his fingertips jittering on the stone, looking out just to feel the night air in his face, the cool of it after the heat of the hall. He watches his hands move as though he's high on something -and it's not too far a comparison, he's buzzing from the music, the attention, the noise, the adoration of the crowd; it's a good feeling – so to be nervous just about _this_ seems ridiculous. But then – perhaps it's pathetic, but it also feels as though without one particular person's approval, everything that just happened could be swept aside as meaningless. He wishes it was otherwise, but in vain.

His head and chest still throb to the beat of his last song, the music casting a spell on him as he makes it that lingers long after the singing is done. It always has done – ever since he took it up, ever since he felt how healing it could be. He feels like he's still flying on it. Sometimes he wonders why he did not go further with actual flying, he had always secretly wanted to in school; he wasn't terrible either, even if one particular arsehole always beat him to the Snitch. Oh _fuck –_ that arsehole – he's coming to meet him, and he _loves_ him, he said, and that should make it easier for Draco to admit what he's felt for so long too but it doesn't – or does it? His head is all awash with confusion when he tries to think about it, to practice how this meeting might go, but he can't – can't imagine a word of it, just hopes and hopes quietly and fervently without quite knowing what exactly it is that he's hoping for.

He almost yells when a broomstick comes out of the night and Harry lands in front of him, but blessedly manages to pull it back. He hears himself say -

“Wow, Potter,” in tones of faintly sarcastic deadpan that frankly impresses him - “dramatic entrance much?”

“Like you can even talk after _that_ performance.” Harry's smiling; Draco's not entirely sure what _that_ means – as he props the broom against the stone and attempts to push his hair back out of his face – it's only barely sucessful, and Draco thinks for the millionth time, how he wants to be the one to do that. It occurs to him that if Harry was to simply push him into this wall and kiss him right now he'd let him, in fact, he wants that more than any other scenario he can imagine. The crackling air feels static around them for his realising this.

“You didn't -” he stops, he's not going to put it like that, however worried he is that Harry didn't like the performance. “So what did you think?” He jerks his chin as he says it, as though it's not that he actually _cares,_ even when his heart feels sick with caring.

“I _think -_ ” Harry replies, more smooth than he feels, reaching for the chin jerked in his direction like he has imagined and wanted to do a million times, running a soft finger along an edge that is just not as sharp as Draco thinks it is, cupping his face as he closes the gap between them - “I think I might die if I don't kiss you right now.”

He knows it sounds over dramatic, but it honestly feels like he _might –_ like kissing Draco is on a par with taking another breath and he _needs_ it just to stay alive, and when Draco makes no move to object – indeed moves almost impercptibly into him, tilting his head up just the faintest fraction, he falls into him with fierce hunger, not simply kissing him but seizing hold of him as he does like he's a life raft in a storm, swearing as his glasses fall down his face and chucking them off heedlessly. There is nothing sharp about Draco when he's here, in his arms; he is simple softness and light, melting like a pool of warm sunlight, insubstantial as a moonbeam; Harry cannot shake the notion that it's like holding starlight in his arms, that he needs to hold on tight, hands moving everywhere, fast and hard or all that glttering sweetness will just melt away like light leaving a deluminator. He wants to touch Draco everywhere, take possession of him with his hands – he never had anything like this before – he never had anything much before – he can feel how possessive he could get so violently it frightens him and he breaks off with a great gasp for breath.

“It was just the place -” he says, realising it finally, even after trying to tell himself so many times already - “Last night – it wasn't me, it was just the place.”

“Yes -” Draco frowns, Harry kisses the little line between his eyes like he's wanted to for so long - “Yes, I said.”

“And I _can_ love you – I'm allowed -”

“ _Yes.”_

“You – _you -”_ he stammers, breathless, caught up in the immensity of being allowed this, captivated by the _You-_ ness of Draco - “You got changed?” he suddenly says in surprise, realising that Draco is now all in black, the simple shirt and trousers that had been habitual to him before he became a sensation, chameleonic and dazzling as if from outer space.

“Yes -” Draco shakes his head in despair at Harry's scattered thought processes, and now he can see faint smears of glitter and shine on his cheeks, in the corners of his eyes, silver shimmers out of his hair when he moves his head - “You didn't.”

“No -” Harry feels suddenly conscious of this, along with his awareness of it; the jeans and t-shirt terribly mediocre even next to a simplified Draco – not to mention a little sweaty from the heat and press of the Great Hall. “No sorry. Had to hurry.”

“Did you now?”

“Yeah – um -” he scratches the back of his head. “Pansy made me.”

“Bless her. Of course she did.” They kiss again, falling back together like one thing that should have been occupying the same space, not like two separate things at all, moving back fluidly until Draco is pressed between Harry and the stone, just like he imagined and wanted.

“You still haven't told me what you thought,” Draco turns his head aside, after a long sweet luxurious age of kissing. Harry whines and nudges his face towards him, clutching needily -

“ _Draco -”_

“Well?”

“It was great -” he babbles impatiently, hard and aching and not wanting even slightly to _talk_ \- “Brilliant. You were beautiful – everything -” he blinks, tries to get a gip on himself - “Except that one song – it was all the wrong colours.”

“Which one?” Draco scowls, folds his arms, holds in his own ache of wanting with what he hopes looks like a defensive gesture - “What do you mean _wrong colours?”_

Harry slides down the wall, legs boneless, another small whimper escaping him.

“The green one – you know – but the song was purple – it clashed, hurt my head.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?” Draco lowers himself down, a little more elegantly. “Do you mean _Morsmordre?_ I _knew_ we shouldn't have done that one – _told_ Blaise it wasn't appropriate.”

“No it wasn't that -” shit, Harry realises he has to explain this one now he's started. “Well – maybe a little bit that, I don't know – but your lighting effects – they were a different colour from the song – I – I see music in colours? Luna says it's called synesthesia?”

“Ohhhhh,” Draco sighs, his concern that Harry had at least temporarily gone barmy abating with understanding - “Really? You have that? What colours am I?”

“All sorts,” Harry says, relieved - “like a rainbow, only one colour after the other, not all together – when I first heard you – fuck that was only yesterday -” he pauses, trying to process this, wondering how they can have come so far in such a short space of time; but then again they've waited long enough. “You were golden – I never felt – or saw anything like it – and tonight – god, you were like -” he finds himself blinking back tears – at the memory of it, at his own inability to find words beautiful enough for how Draco sounds to him. “Sorry,” he hangs his head at his failure at a sudden excrutiating rush of his own inadequacy - “I'm an idiot, sorry,” he blinks back tears rapidly, unable to look up.

“Harry -” Draco's hand, turning his face, he fights it for a half second then simply stares at him beseechingly, a lump in his throat at the sound of his name spoken like _that –_ and coming from Draco, who shakes his head now and smiles, a curve of the lips that really does – Harry thinks – re-write history. “You _are_ an idiot,” Draco nods, leaning his head in so that their noses are touching, Harry thinks he will never feel anything in the world so tender as the tip of Draco's nose and he knows he's lost to this love forever. Or found.

“But you're _my_ idiot,” Draco finishes, and dips in to kiss him, and it feels to Harry like magic, like he has waited all his life to be kissed like this, like it's the fairytale he never ever thought could come true. He feels clumsy in response, clutching back needily; a part of him wants to keep talking now, to actually tell Draco how beautiful he is, how exquisite – how touching him feels like getting his hands on something desperately precious, something he could never possibly deserve. He can't tell him that, not just yet; Draco would be insufferable if he did. Instead he whispers between kisses -

“Can I -?” though he's touching him already, sliding his hands under Draco's shirt, pulling him closer by the waistband, suddenly it's easy to say - “Need you. Please. It's been so long,”- so easy he wonders why he never did, wonders how he _can_ have left it this long – exactly _how_ long he does _not_ yet quite dare to say but Draco just nods, a very small fervent nod, his forehead against Harry's already, nods like he knows, like it's been that long for him too and Harry does not dare wonder if this is true. He can't speak for a moment; kissing Draco feels so right, like luxuriating in the sweetest drink he's ever tasted, removing his shirt with shaky fingers is like stripping the night sky from the stars until the whole sky blazes with stardust and he's drowning in it and it's the best death he has ever experienced.

He's not even in control of this, he thinks, even though he is the one moving Draco beneath his hands, turning him in his fingers like sand – like however much he digs his fingers in, his hands will never be full enough. But it's Draco who guides his every move, Draco who pushes himself into Harry's hands, his skin so so soft, his body so hard he hardly has the ability to notice that Draco is holding onto him in return. His body is so painfully aware of everything he wants that he hardly even realises that Draco is the one saying _please_ and _yes_ and finally _in me, yes please, need you inside me –_ because he needs to be so much anyway, even though he hardly knows what to do but Draco is a tide and he is caught in it and it's move this way or be dragged under. Draco shivers out of his trousers like a snake shaking off its skin and he's pulling Harry hard against every inch of his nakedness and there's no option in the world but to drag his own clothes off and swim in that tide. Draco turns, pushing himself into the wall, arching his body back in offering, twisting his head to try and see Harry at the same time and Harry can hardly _look_ for his beauty from that angle, can hardly believe his own fingers as they slip inside of Draco, Draco moaning shamelessly into the cool night air and pushing back and whispering some kind of spell and urging Harry to _more,_ always _more,_ and Merlin, it's not like he doesn't want to, not like he _could_ do anythign else; pushing into him is like all the colours of every song he ever heard exploding in his head and if anyone tried to describe this act as fucking Draco against a castle wall he thinks he'd laugh and say he never did that, and then he almost laughs out loud for the sheer joy of realising that he _is_ doing that and it doesn't sound bad put like that either.

And it's not like Draco expected it not to hurt, but he had never imagined it could feel so simultaneously _good,_ and the first cries he makes when Harry is completely inside him are pained, yes, but they pause long enough for him to breathe and after that – it's not even just the feeling of Harry inside him, his chest pressed into Draco's back, the tension in their limbs and the cool gritty press of the wall against his palms – it's very far from just that, it's the knowing that's it _him,_ that it's _them_ and shoving themselves together is something they've been trying to do for a very long time, all the time convinced that they were fighting. He's wanted this since he knew what sex was; one day he thinks he might admit that out loud. It's that feeling – like a performance – like when you're flying above the stage, only now he's gone higher, all the way up to the stars, flipping and turning inside out. Of course, it's always a surprise to find yourself flying wihtout any kind of magical aid. Harry's nuzzling his neck as he thrusts into him and Draco remembers that he _loves_ him – that as well as everything and he feels a terrible wondeful pain in his chest – the pain of knowing that something as wonderful as this – this all together- love and fucking – could be his now. The stars are streaming beyond his eyes, the sky swirling like it's part of a performance and he can imagine the music of the sky and the wind and the castle wall in a hundred dazzling colours and the pleasure is so intense he feels almost sick with it, shaking for a long time after the sky has stopped exploding, sagging in a messy pile of limbs on the deliciously cool stone floor.

“Yes,” he hears himself say - “Yes I do, and it's not fair -”

“What's not fair?”

“It's not fair how much I love you, too.”

And they're laughing breathlessly, messily, half crying with the relief of it as the winds around them fall still.

__x__

**Gah! Can't believe there's only one chapter left! :-((((**


	14. Chapter 14

**14.**

“Potter! Oi! Potter!”

“Sorry guys -” Harry swoops down to earth from the middle of a practice game - “Got stuff to do.”

He grins, running across the grass, windswept and elated, to Draco who simply stands there smiling at him and reaching out a hand – his version of outstretched arms.

“I'm stuff!” he shouts up to the rest of the team, before Harry gathers him into a kiss. He's sweaty and red in the face from flying and Draco's in lilac brocade and cream lace, and Merlin knows what they look like, but he loves them, he will never stop loving the _themness_ of them. It's only been three days since Draco's first show, but they feel like the only three worthwhile days he has ever lived.

“Harry!” snaps a voice coming up on him fast on angry feet - “Harry James Potter, can you put your boyfriend down for five measly seconds so we can _actually_ finish a game?”

He turns, grinning sheepishly, not actually letting go of Draco, never wanting to – not any more – it seems like he can't ever have enough, like it's the worst drag to ever stop touching him – now that he has finally given in to these sensations, he cannot be so harsh on himself as to deny either of them anything. Still there _is_ a whole world out there beyond the two of them, he grudgingly admits, and right now it looks like Ginny, standing glaring at them with her hands on her hips but – it must be said – with a faint smile in the corners of her mouth.

“Sorry Gin,” he mutters, looking at the floor and squeezing Draco's hand like he could hold that hand in the squeeze of his heartbeat.

“Yeah, well -” Ginny sighs heavily, but before she can continue Taz stomps over to her grinning – stomping is Taz's normal way of walking, after all, and she throws an arm heftily over Ginny's shoulders -

“Give em some peace, hey Gin? It's snog break, isn't it?” she winks at Draco and Harry and kisses Ginny before she can retort.

“Ohhhh -” Draco says suddenly, nodding with widening eyes as he stares at Ginny and Taz for a second - “- she _plays for the Harpies!”_

Harry splutters and shakes his head, unable to believe it's taken him this long to get it.

“Slow much?” he turns back to Draco.

“Harry!” now Hermione comes striding over, Ron and Krum flanking her like soft bodyguards - “Draco! Both of you – don't you realise Wonderful Wizarding Week starts in two days now?”

“They're – not _really_ calling it that are they?” Draco moans, in true horror.

“At least they've _found_ a name for it,” Hermione huffs, arms folded over her chest - “And they're preparing up at the castle – what are _you_ all doing? Harry that doesn't look like Quidditch to me, and Draco – Pansy's going spare over there -”

“Sounds like reason enough for me,” Draco beams - “Let's give it a bit until Blaise loses it too, shall we?”

“ _Blaise_ -” Hermione puts on the most disaproving voice she has - “Thinks we should give you all the next two days, to – as he believe he said, _chill out_ in. An attitude I hardly think is productive by the way and McGonagall says she's not sure quite what she's doing letting the school house a bunch of adult children who do nothing but get up to preposterous shenanigans all over her Quidditch pitch.” She fixes them with a challenging stare.

“Preposterous shenanigans -” Harry nods approvingly.

“I, for one, support it,” Draco agrees.

“Yeah, drop it Granger,” Pansy bounces up - “Like you don't have double the shenanigan potential of the rest of us.” She gazes at Viktor a little too wistfully, who smiles pleasantly back at her before she makes a garbled sound and breaks eye contact quickly.

“No!” Hermione wails - “Not you as well!”

“Yeah well,” she shrugs - “Blaise may have convinced me of the need for some _chill out_ time. I suppose it can't hurt. Not like these four lovebirds are gonna leave each other's faces alone any time soon -”

“Oh it's not just faces,” Draco smirks.

“Also – six,” Taz adds with a sigh.

“What?”

“Six lovebirds. Oliver Wood flew in this morning. Flint's hardly even _trying_ to captain us right now. Honestly what _is_ it with all these Slytherins banging Gryffindors?”

“Really?” Ginny blinks at her - “You're Slytherin?”

They wander off to the benches hand in hand.

“ _Now_ what?” Hermione sighs.

“Take the day off, 'Mione,” Harry laughs - “Go sing karaoke with the spare microphone or something.”

“What's Karaoke?” Pansy frowns.

“Hermione will show you. Won't you 'Mione?”

She gives him a look like thunder, but the others are all looking at her so expectantly she sighs - “Oh alright, then,” and they head back to Blaise and the makeshift stage.

“Trying to get me alone Potter?” Draco smirks, lip curling in the old arrogant way, starlight in his eyes.

“Succeeding,” Harry grins back, holding him against him by the belt buckle, a silver peacock feather, and honestly Draco's outfit today would have been ridiculous on anyone else, a white tailcoat with a plume of white feathers trailing from the tails. On anyone else it might have appeared preposterous; on Draco it makes him look simply like he only just landed on Earth. In the background, the static of electric guitar sweeps its spaceship parabola through the air and the terrible sound of three happy people singing _We Are the Champions_ is transformed in Harry's head into a crashing rainbow paint splash of colour. And in the middle of all that colour is Draco, the one thing that has always both kept him grounded and made him fly, ivory and gold in the middle of all that colour.

__x__

**Finished! Come talk drarry things and all sorts of things with me on tumblr at _seeker-in-the-shade_.....also watch this space for my next fic :-)**


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